Alec Martinez
Chicago Blackhawks Defense
Thirty-seven, blocks shots, and takes 83 per cent of his own attempts from beyond forty feet.
| 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 | VGK | 77 | 3 | 11 | 14 | +30 | 29 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 76 | 4.0 | 19:13 |
| 2023-24 | VGK | 55 | 4 | 13 | 17 | -2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 72 | 5.6 | 19:03 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 818 | 83 | 194 | 277 | +88 | 242 | 19 | 2 | 16 | 1167 | 7.1 | 19:36 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
Fifty-five games in Vegas, 4 goals and 13 assists, 19:03 a night and minus-2. He took 47.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 930 minutes, the 32nd percentile, and his ice went 43-46 against an expectation of 35.64-40.23.
Level on goals while the chances said he should have been seven under is a good season, and it came at 36 in the hardest minutes a Vegas defenceman is given.
The Finesse Game
Seventy-two shots at a median of 57 feet, with 2 per cent from inside 20 and 83 per cent from beyond 40. There is no version of this man’s game that involves getting close to a net.
The point shot is low, hard and aimed at a stick in front rather than at the goaltender, and it is what 19 career power-play goals were built on. He has 194 assists in 818 games and moves the puck quickly rather than cleverly.
The Physical Game
He blocks shots for a living and has for fifteen years. Six penalty minutes in 55 games is remarkable discipline for a defenceman playing nineteen minutes a night — he takes the body when it is there and takes nothing when it is not.
At 6-1 and 210 he is not going to overwhelm anybody at 37, and the crease is cleared by leverage and position rather than by force.
The Intangibles
Three Stanley Cups — two in Los Angeles, one in Vegas — and the overtime goal that won the 2014 final. A fourth-round pick who played 818 games and has never been on a losing club for long.
Chicago signed a thirty-seven-year-old for a season that will not go anywhere. What he brings is a standard of preparation and a right way to defend a two-goal lead, and the club has two teenagers on the blue line who have never seen either.
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
82.7% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.11 penalty minutes a game over 55, 1st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“He blocks shots for a living and has for fifteen years.”
“What he brings is a standard of preparation and a right way to defend a two-goal lead, and the club has two teenagers on the blue line who have never seen either.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 930 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47%
- 32nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.1%
- 13th 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: 43 for, 46 against. Expected: 35.6 and 40.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 28 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 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, 2023-24 · 55 games
- Top speed
- 21.9 mph
- 57th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.25 a game
- Distance
- 2.55 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 97.1 mph
- 81st pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 with VGK · 930 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, 2023-24
- The club
- VGK took 51.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.0% — 4.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 930 minutes at five-on-five — 50th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Pietrangelo | 46.6% | 47.9% | 55.0% |
| Ivan Barbashev | 40.7% | 49.2% | 52.1% |
| Chandler Stephenson | 47.3% | 46.8% | 45.5% |
46.6% together, 47.9% for him apart and 55.0% for Pietrangelo apart. Pietrangelo was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
104 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 83% from beyond forty.