The Edmonton Oilers entered the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a glaring hole within their lineup. Star defenceman Mattias Ekholm battled injury during the second half of the regular season, and tried to return from his ailment, but only played two shifts of one game before re-aggravating it. When the Stanley Cup Playoffs requires defence as an absolute and not an ask, that’s a large presence to be missing.

Players within the lineup would need to step up, and none has done so more often and consistently than Brett Kulak. Earlier in the playoffs, defenders like John Klingberg and Jake Walman had to get up to speed and offensive-minded d-men Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard struggled with keeping the puck out of their net. Kulak helped limit the Oilers’ mistakes in their own end, and has rarely had a bad game.

Some of the metrics really show just how much he, and other Oilers d-men, have stepped up as the playoffs have carried on longer and longer.

The basic defensive metrics

Earlier on in the playoffs, Kulak was the best at limiting opponents’ high danger shots against, among other things. As the playoffs wear on, Kulak’s workload has increased as the team continues to trust him to keep things shut down in the Oilers’ zone. These are a couple of the overall stats through 15 playoff games for Kulak:

Kulak has logged the second-most shifts on the team, behind only Nurse, and the third-largest share of ice time behind Nurse and Bouchard. Combined, nearly 37 percent of Kulak’s shifts that haven’t started “on the fly” without a stoppage in play, have begun in either the defensive or the neutral zone, the highest such margin of anybody on the team. Only Emberson had a higher percentage of shifts start in the d-zone, and Emberson hasn’t played since Game three of the series against the Vegas Golden Knights.

Results are key, though, and Kulak has indeed kept those up. With on-ice HDSA per 60 minutes, Kulak is at 1.88, by far the highest of everyone besides Troy Stecher (who has only played six games so far), and the Oilers have a +4 goal differential with Kulak, fourth-highest on the D-corps. He is also blocking a lot of shots—29 so far—and an average of 1.9 per game, both top three among Oilers defencemen.

Fancy-stat observation of Kulak’s play

Expected goals can be a really good measurement of just how well a defenceman is playing. If the xG against number is low, usually the player is only letting shots through that the goaltender has an easy time stopping. These numbers can also show if a defenceman is getting good or bad luck, depending on game situation.

Interestingly enough, Kulak is serving as the perfect median in terms of possession, posting 50% in both 5v5 Corsi and Fenwick, with three defencemen ahead of him and three d-men behind him. Where Kulak has shone before, and continues to shine, is on-ice expected goals percentage, where he’s put up an xG% of 55.3, almost exactly on par with Klingberg, and otherwise behind only Bouchard (who’s having a defensive renaissance of his own) and Walman. The off-ice xG% number is likewise bested by only Bouchard, Walman, and Stecher.

Kulak also ranks third in Expected Goals Against per 60 minutes, with 2.1 xGA/60. The only two players with a better number than that are Stecher (1.91) and Bouchard (2.04). Overall, it’s safe to say Kulak has consistently been a master at keeping the puck out of his team’s net throughout the playoffs.

Recently Kulak has aided offensively

The Western Conference Final has seen Kulak get his first goal of the playoffs, and other notable contributions at the offensive end of the ice. Coming into the series, Kulak had just two assists through the first 11 playoff games, and both came at opposite ends of the Los Angeles series. Over the Oilers’ three-game winning streak versus Dallas, he has a point in each of them:

Though Kulak hasn’t factored in on a game-winner yet, he’s still gotten his points on key goals in those games. His goal in Game 2 gave the Oilers some insurance to the 1–0 lead they had had since the first period:

Kulak also assisted on Bouchard’s opening tally in Game 3, and in Game 4, helped spring Kapanen for the first of two empty-netters to seal victory for Edmonton. Keeping the opponent from scoring was solid enough, and nobody is expecting Kulak to be as offensive-minded as Bouchard or Nurse. But clutch contributions like these further boost Kulak’s value to this Oilers squad, as they look to close out the Western Conference Final.

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