This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Alex Tuch

Thirty-six goals, nine game-winners, and the 97th percentile in sprints over twenty miles an hour at 6-4.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2016-17	MIN	6	0	0	0	-3	0	0	0	0	8	0.0	10:42
2017-18	VGK	78	15	22	37	+3	27	4	0	4	171	8.8	15:15
2018-19	VGK	74	20	32	52	+13	8	3	0	6	180	11.1	16:44
2019-20	VGK	42	8	9	17	-10	8	3	0	2	98	8.2	14:37
2020-21	VGK	55	18	15	33	+16	28	2	0	3	142	12.7	16:50
2021-22	BUF	50	12	26	38	-3	14	2	1	0	139	8.6	18:25
2022-23	BUF	74	36	43	79	+14	20	8	1	9	218	16.5	19:09
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	379	109	147	256	+30	105	22	2	24	956	11.4	16:48

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

36 goals and 43 assists in 74 games — 79 points at 19:09 a night, plus-14, with 8 power-play goals and 9 game-winners on 218 shots, converting at 16.51 per cent, and only 20 penalty minutes.

Nine game-winning goals led the club and was among the most in the league. 52.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,021 minutes, the 70th percentile; his ice went 66-49 against an expectation of 54.25-49.18.

The Finesse Game

218 attempts at a median of 27 feet, 33 per cent from inside 20 and 16 per cent from beyond 40, off a 93.4 mph shot at the 67th percentile.

He drives the net and finishes there, and 43 assists says he can also make the play instead. 256 points in 379 games. The shot is good rather than exceptional; the reason he scores is that he arrives with the puck in a place where a good shot is enough.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 219, and the skating is the thing that makes him unusual: 23.2 mph at the 91st percentile, 3.2 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game at the 97th, and 3.21 miles at the 91st. Almost nobody that size moves like that.

He is heavy on the forecheck and difficult to defend on a rush because the closing speed arrives with 219 pounds behind it. 105 penalty minutes in 379 games says he plays hard without being dirty.

The Intangibles

Eighteenth overall in 2014 to Minnesota, then Vegas in expansion, then here in the Jack Eichel trade — the return that has aged best.

He is 27 and from Syracuse, two hours down the road, which in Buffalo counts for something. On a club whose whole problem is that it cannot defend, a first-line winger who is fast, heavy and willing on the forecheck is more valuable than the 79 points suggest.

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.

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.

forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck
“He is heavy on the forecheck and difficult to defend on a rush because the closing speed arrives with 219 pounds behind it.”
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He drives the net and finishes there, and 43 assists says he can also make the play instead.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“He is heavy on the forecheck and difficult to defend on a rush because the closing speed arrives with 219 pounds behind it.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,021 minutes

Expected goals: 52.5%; 71st pct
Shot attempts: 53.7%; 84th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 66 for, 49 against. Expected: 54.3 and 49.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

97th

Numbers

71st

The report ranks him 26 points above where the numbers do. 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 1021 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, 2022-23

The club: BUF took 49.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.5% — 2.7 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,021 minutes at five-on-five — 60th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Jeff Skinner	53.8%	47.1%	49.1%
Tage Thompson	52.4%	52.6%	48.1%
Rasmus Dahlin	55.0%	50.1%	52.8%

53.8% together, 47.1% for him apart and 49.1% for Skinner apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

300 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 36 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.