This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Alex Tuch
Buffalo Sabres Right Wing
Six foot four, fifty-nine points and seven game-winners, and the most complete forward on the roster.
| 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 | BUF | 75 | 22 | 37 | 59 | +9 | 54 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 192 | 11.5 | 19:30 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 454 | 131 | 184 | 315 | +39 | 159 | 24 | 3 | 31 | 1148 | 11.4 | 17:15 |
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
22 goals and 37 assists in 75 games — 59 points at 19:30 a night, plus-9, with 2 power-play goals, 1 shorthanded goal and 7 game-winners on 192 shots, converting at 11.46 per cent, and 54 penalty minutes.
Seven game-winning goals is the most on the club and 315 points in 454 career games is a first-line winger’s rate.
50.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,077 minutes, the 57th percentile. His ice went 54-45 against an expectation of 49.65-48.63 — ten fewer goals conceded than the chances predicted.
The Finesse Game
192 attempts at a median of 30 feet, with 33 per cent from inside 20 and 24 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 11.46 per cent.
He carries the puck into the offensive zone at 6-4 and gains the line under control, which on a club with this much size and this little transition is the rarest thing on the roster. 37 assists and 184 in 454 games — he holds the puck through the first check and finds the man arriving late.
The shot is good rather than special. What separates him is that he can do the entering, the passing and the finishing on the same shift.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 219, and he forechecks first and finishes his checks. He wins pucks on the wall against defencemen and he will go to the front of the net.
54 penalty minutes in 75 games and 159 in 454 for his career is a moderate rate. He is not an agitator and he does not go looking for the second penalty.
The Intangibles
Eighteenth overall in 2014 by Minnesota, a Stanley Cup final with Vegas, and traded here in the Jack Eichel deal in 2021.
He is 28 and is the oldest forward on the club who matters. On a roster of first-round picks who have not yet become what they were drafted to be, he is the one man who plainly already is what he is going to be, and what he is is a very good top-six winger.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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.
“**He carries the puck into the offensive zone at 6-4 and gains the line under control**, which on a club with this much size and this little transition is the rarest thing on the roster.”
“**37 assists and 184 in 454 games** — he holds the puck through the first check and finds the man arriving late.”
“**6-4 and 219, and he forechecks first and finishes his checks.** He wins pucks on the wall against defencemen and he will go to the front of the net.”
“**6-4 and 219, and he forechecks first and finishes his checks.** He wins pucks on the wall against defencemen and he will go to the front of the net.”
“**6-4 and 219, and he forechecks first and finishes his checks.**”
“He is not an agitator and he does not go looking for the second penalty.”
“**On a roster of first-round picks who have not yet become what they were drafted to be, he is the one man who plainly already is what he is going to be**, and what he is is a very good top-six winger.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,077 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.5%
- 57th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.9%
- 62nd 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: 54 for, 45 against. Expected: 49.6 and 48.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 27 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 77 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 · 75 games
- Top speed
- 23.0 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.53 a game
- Distance
- 3.11 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.2 mph
- 66th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.5
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 · 1077 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
- BUF took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.5% — 1.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second line, 1,077 minutes at five-on-five — 68th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tage Thompson | 52.6% | 47.8% | 49.2% |
| Rasmus Dahlin | 51.6% | 49.5% | 51.2% |
| Jeff Skinner | 53.3% | 48.4% | 44.8% |
52.6% together, 47.8% for him apart and 49.2% for Thompson 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
279 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 23 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.