This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Alec Martinez
Vegas Golden Knights Defense
Twenty-six games at 8.03 blocks per 60, which no qualified defenceman in the league matched.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-10 | LAK | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0.0 | 15:25 |
| 2010-11 | LAK | 60 | 5 | 11 | 16 | +11 | 18 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 74 | 6.8 | 15:17 |
| 2011-12 | LAK | 51 | 6 | 6 | 12 | -1 | 8 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 78 | 7.7 | 14:43 |
| 2012-13 | LAK | 27 | 1 | 4 | 5 | -2 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 3.3 | 16:01 |
| 2013-14 | LAK | 61 | 11 | 11 | 22 | +17 | 14 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 79 | 13.9 | 15:41 |
| 2014-15 | LAK | 56 | 6 | 16 | 22 | +9 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 103 | 5.8 | 19:56 |
| 2015-16 | LAK | 78 | 10 | 21 | 31 | +16 | 40 | 4 | 0 | 4 | 124 | 8.1 | 21:09 |
| 2016-17 | LAK | 82 | 9 | 30 | 39 | -17 | 24 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 144 | 6.3 | 21:38 |
| 2017-18 | LAK | 77 | 9 | 16 | 25 | +3 | 34 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 111 | 8.1 | 22:52 |
| 2018-19 | LAK | 60 | 4 | 14 | 18 | -2 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 78 | 5.1 | 21:22 |
| 2019-20 | LAK/VGK | 51 | 3 | 13 | 16 | -4 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 75 | 4.0 | 21:30 |
| 2020-21 | VGK | 53 | 9 | 23 | 32 | +26 | 12 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 85 | 10.6 | 22:34 |
| 2021-22 | VGK | 26 | 3 | 5 | 8 | +6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 9.4 | 19:32 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 686 | 76 | 170 | 246 | +60 | 207 | 19 | 1 | 14 | 1019 | 7.5 | 19:41 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
26 games, 3 goals and 5 assists at 19:32 a night, plus-6, four penalty minutes, 32 shots. Ninety-fifth overall in 2007 by Los Angeles — the fourth round — thirteen seasons, 686 games, 246 points.
Four hundred and fifty-nine minutes of five-on-five ice and twenty-six games are both short of the gate this book uses, so what follows is described rather than ranked.
The Finesse Game
3.78 shots per 60 from a 48-foot median, with eleven per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet and three goals from thirty-two shots.
1.03 even-strength points per 60, and none of his eight points came on the power play off 0:29 a night with the man advantage.
54.1 per cent of the expected goals across 459 five-on-five minutes, out of 57.7 per cent offensive-zone starts, the 105th-highest of the 652 skaters who took two hundred end-zone starts — the softest chair any defenceman on this roster was given.
His ice went 21-15 against an expectation of 23.67-20.06 — two and a half short in front and five fewer against than the model asked, on a quarter of a season.
The Physical Game
8.03 blocks per 60 across twenty-six games, against a figure of 7.901 that led all 202 qualified defencemen.
He is not in that pool and this is not a league lead, but it is worth saying plainly: the two men on this blue line who block the most shots block more of them than anybody in the league does.
3.07 hits per 60, 1:13 a night short-handed, and four penalty minutes in twenty-six games — 207 across a 686-game career.
6-1 and 210 pounds.
The Intangibles
21.7 mph and 0.59 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60, both from twenty-six games and both low, against 8.14 miles per 60. His shot is 96.2 mph, which is the one measurement in the file that is genuinely good.
He is 35, a fourth-round pick, with 246 points in 686 games and a career plus-60. Fifty-six games lost is the number, and a defenceman who blocks eight shots per 60 at 35 is a man whose availability is the risk in the file rather than the ability.
Nineteen and a half minutes a night when he played, from the softest chair on the blue line. That is a third pair being protected, and the club was right to protect it.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
58% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“8.03 blocks per 60 across twenty-six games, against a figure of 7.901 that led all 202 qualified defencemen.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 459 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.1%
- 82nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.7%
- 71st pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 21 for, 15 against. Expected: 23.7 and 20.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 9 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2021-22 · 26 games
- Top speed
- 21.7 mph
- 57th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.19 a game
- Distance
- 2.65 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 96.2 mph
- 79th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2021-22 · 459 minutes at five-on-five
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2021-22
- The club
- VGK took 52.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.1% — 1.4 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 459 minutes at five-on-five — 15th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zach Whitecloud | 57.3% | 52.4% | 55.0% |
| Jonathan Marchessault | 61.6% | 50.8% | 53.6% |
| Shea Theodore | 52.5% | 54.8% | 52.7% |
57.3% together, 52.4% for him apart and 55.0% for Whitecloud apart. He was worse away from Whitecloud, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Whitecloud did.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
44 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 52 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.