Brandon Duhaime helped get Washington’s fourth line back into extraordinary territory in 2024-25. Also he punched ten different dudes.
By the Numbers
9
Goals
12
Assists
82
Games played
13
Minutes per game
On-ice percentages
49%
Shot attempts
50%
Expected goals
49%
Actual goals
Isolated Impact by HockeyViz
About this visualization: This image by Micah Blake McCurdy of hockeyviz.com shows how the player has impacted play when on the ice. At the top of the image is the team’s offense (even strength at left, power play at right) and at bottom is the team’s defense (with penalty kill at bottom right). In each case, red/orange blobs mean teams shoot for more from that location on the ice, and blue/purple means less. In general, a good player should have red/orange blobs near the opponent’s net at top, and blue/purple blobs near their own team’s net at bottom. The distributions in middle show how the player compares to league average at individual finishing, setting up teammates to score, and taking and drawing penalties. The number at center is Synthetic Goals: a catch-all number for the player’s impact.
Player Card by All Three Zones
About this player card: This image from Corey Sznajder of All Three Zones shows how the player compares to league averages in different microstats in the defensive, neutral, and offensive zones. Blue bars mean the player has a higher rate in that statistic compared to league average, and orange means a lower rate. The numbers are Z-scores, also known as standard deviations, indicating how far the number is from league average, where more than two standard deviations means the player is on the extreme edge of the league.
Player Overview by NHL Edge
About this visualization: The NHL’s advanced statistics program, Edge, tracks player and puck movement. At left are the player’s numbers in various statistics along with the average number for that same stat among players of the same position and the player’s percentile rank in it. At right is a radar chart for various statistics, where the bigger the shape the better the player performs in those measures.
Fan Happiness Survey
About this visualization: At three times during the season, RMNB conducted an open survey with readers, asking the following question for each player: “On a scale from 1 to 5, how HAPPY are you to have this player on the team?” The numbers above show the average score for the player in each survey period.
Slavoj Žižek on Duhaime
Man as dog! sniff This is not a primalism, no! It is the hyper-real performance of primalism,a facade on a facade. Pure ideology.
Peter’s Take
Like with Nic Dowd, our first principle when thinking about Duhaime is how sucky his deployments were. When it’s time for coaches to pick a line for an offensive draw, Duhaime engages his cloaking device. This is good and fine and correct when you have the greatest goal-scorer of all time chambered, but it also means that we have to hang giant asterisk on all of Duhaime’s stats.
The Caps were outscored 31 to 29 when Duhaime was on the ice. I don’t care. In the last three seasons, only 16 NHL forwards have been more defensively deployed. All of them have lower on-ice goals percentages except three fellas: Dowd and Hathaway in 2022-23, and Nicolas Aube-Kubel in 2023-24 – hashtag all Caps. Most players deployed like Duhaime are below the tank line of 40 percent in on-ice goals percentage; Duhaime was a couple bounces from being above 50.
Despite starting so far away from the opponent net, Duhaime tied his career-best goal total with nine and set a new career-best in assists with 12.
Other teams are not like this. In DC, we’ve got such an extreme in how the fourth line is used in Washington that it’s easy to miss how special it is. Nic Dowd is at the root of the fourth line’s success, but Duhaime was the perfect amendment to bring them back into brilliance this season.
Doggy on RMNB
- Last summer, the Caps signed Brandon Duhaime to two-year deal worth $1.85 million per year.
- The hope was that the new fourth line would provide more offense last season. Despite a drop in shooting percentage, they did just that.
- In October, the whole dog thing began with a post-game celebration.
- Duhaime blocked a shot from Cale Makar with his foot, but didn’t miss any whole games.
- From McMichael: “I don’t know how to describe Dewey. I feel like he’s never had a bad day. That’s the best way to describe him. I feel like even if I’m in a bad mood, he’ll prank someone. That’s what he’s most well known for on our team is being the prankster. And he’ll prank someone, and I just can’t help myself but start laughing, and even on the bench, someone will make a nice play, and he’s hyping a guy up. It’s just unbelievable. He’s always bringing great energy.”
Capitals players reveal the biggest pranks from this season and who’s behind them
- Do you remember the brawl with the Kraken?
- Brandon Duhaime promised not to prank ex-teammate Marc-Andre Fleury: ‘I’ve learned my lesson’
- After the Carolina dust-up in April, Duhaime beat Jalen Chatfield in a fight.
- I can’t even with this:
- RMNB Investigates: Why were Brandon Duhaime and Pierre-Luc Dubois looking at a spoon entering the locker room?
Your Turn
I’m sure we’re all thinking, run it back in 2025-26. So the only question is — ten fights in a season? Can he top that?
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