Josh Brown was acquired by the Edmonton Oilers on July 1 and signed to a three-year, $1M AAV contract.
Brown’s career history
Brown will be entering his seventh year in the NHL after being originally drafted by the Florida Panthers in the 2013 NHL draft in the sixth round, 152nd overall. Brown then bounced from team to team, starting in 2018 he spent two years in Florida, a year and a half in Ottawa before finishing the second season in Boston, then two years in Arizona where he scored his career high 10 points in 51 games last year.
Here are Brown’s stats from hockeyreference.com:
| Season | Team | GP | Goals | Assists | Points | TOI |
| 2018-19 | FLA | 37 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 13:18 |
| 2019-20 | FLA | 56 | 3 | 5 | 8 | 13:25 |
| 2020-21 | OTT | 26 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 14:08 |
| 2021-22 | OTT/BOS | 52 | 0 | 6 | 6 | 14:13 |
| 2022-23 | ARI | 68 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 15:46 |
| 2023-24 | ARI | 51 | 3 | 7 | 10 | 14:45 |
| Career | – | 290 | 11 | 23 | 34 | 14:24 |
Brown’s underlying statistics
Josh Brown’s on ice statistics do leave something to be desired as his Corsi, shots for, scoring chances for, and high danger scoring chances for percentages are all closer to 40% than 50%. Something to keep in mind about these stats though, is that they are actually team statistics solely taken when an individual is on the ice. They suffer from the same shortcomings as the plus-minus stat. A player may have terrific on ice stats on a good team then be traded to the bottom of the league and have those stats reversed, that doesn’t mean that the player got bonked on the head and forgot how to play.
This does factor into Brown’s situation to a degree as his numbers were over 50% when he played for Boston, though he only played six games, and were near 50% when he played for Florida.
Something else to consider is that Brown has been a bottom four, usually bottom pair, defenceman his entire career and is therefore likely playing with weaker forward lines more often, while also being subjected to higher tier opposing forwards when the opponent is able to arrange a mismatch. A brief look at the stats of almost every team will tell you that the lower defensive pairs have lower numbers, no matter how good the team. While this is obviously affected by the individuals being less skilled the effect of the players around, the individual can’t be ignored.
On the individual level, Brown holds his own among players over the last three years with over 1000 minutes played in shot blocking and hits, ranking 70th and 71st of 673 respectively. All said and done, while not an offensive threat, Brown is capable in the areas where a bottom pair defenseman should be.
Brown in the Oilers lineup
Unfortunately for Brown, there is likely not a full time position for him in the Oilers roster, assuming nothing changes. As the roster sits today, Evan Bouchard-Mattias Ekholm, Darnell Nurse-Philip Broberg, and Brett Kulak-Cody Ceci appears to be the most likely setup at this point, but Josh Brown and Troy Stecher are solid options in the case of injury.
Adding Josh Brown was a solid depth move on the part of Jeff Jackson who continues his impressive work as acting GM.
Stats from capfriendly.com, hockey-reference.com, and naturalstattrick.com
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