This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Alex Vlasic
Chicago Blackhawks Defense
Six foot six, twenty-three, and the reach is already the best defensive tool on the roster.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | CHI | 15 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 12 | 8.3 | 14:19 |
| 2022-23 | CHI | 6 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0.0 | 19:38 |
| 2023-24 | CHI | 76 | 2 | 14 | 16 | -4 | 45 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 71 | 2.8 | 21:29 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 97 | 3 | 16 | 19 | -7 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 87 | 3.5 | 20:16 |
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
His first full season: 76 games, 2 goals and 14 assists, 21:29 a night and minus-4 on a club that finished 31st. He took 46.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,353 minutes, the 28th percentile, and his ice went 50-51 against an expectation of 48.08-55.59.
A minus-4 on a club whose leading scorer was minus-44 is the number to look at. He played hard minutes with Seth Jones and came out of them nearly level, which nobody else here managed.
The Finesse Game
Two goals on 71 shots at a median of 52 feet says what it says. He is not going to score and he does not pretend otherwise.
The puck moves out of the zone on the first available pass rather than on a carry — 14 assists and a game built on making the simple play early. At 6-6 the skating is better than the frame suggests, and he can turn and go with a winger down the wall.
The Physical Game
He defends the rush with reach almost nobody gets around. A stick that long, held out early, takes away the inside lane before a forward has decided which side to attack, and it is the single most effective thing on this blue line.
He does not clear his crease by force and does not punish anybody along the wall. Forty-five penalty minutes in 76 games is ordinary. The body is enormous and the game is not built around it.
The Intangibles
Taken 43rd overall in 2019 out of the Chicago suburbs, and now playing top-pair minutes for the club he grew up watching. Twenty-one and a half minutes at 23 on a club this bad is a real burden and he carried it without the season leaving a mark on his numbers.
He is the one defenceman here whose next three seasons look like a first-pair career rather than a bet.
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
- 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.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
17.3% of his attempts in the slot, 91st percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
46.4% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 39.9% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.5, 98th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“He defends the rush with reach almost nobody gets around.”
“He does not clear his crease by force and does not punish anybody along the wall.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,353 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.4%
- 28th pct
- Shot attempts
- 45.4%
- 19th 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: 50 for, 51 against. Expected: 48.1 and 55.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 26 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 — 53 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 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 84th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.75 a game
- Distance
- 3.01 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.5 mph
- 42nd 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 · 1353 minutes at five-on-five
- Seth Jones64%
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
- CHI took 41.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.4% — 4.5 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,353 minutes at five-on-five — 92nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seth Jones | 46.5% | 46.1% | 44.3% |
| Jason Dickinson | 56.2% | 41.7% | 38.9% |
| Philipp Kurashev | 44.8% | 47.0% | 39.5% |
46.5% together, 46.1% for him apart and 44.3% for Jones apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.
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
98 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 67 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 66% from beyond forty.