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 44.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,353 minutes, the 16th percentile, and his ice went 33-59 against an expectation of 45.62-57.29.
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.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,353 minutes
- Expected goals
- 44.3%
- 16th pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.9%
- 16th 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: 33 for, 59 against. Expected: 45.6 and 57.3.
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 201 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.
Usual linemates
2023-24 · 1353 minutes at five-on-five
- Seth Jones64%
- Jaycob Megnanow FLA8%
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 44.3% — 2.4 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 | 44.0% | 44.9% | 44.6% |
| Jason Dickinson | 49.6% | 42.0% | 37.0% |
| Philipp Kurashev | 45.8% | 43.8% | 41.5% |
44.0% together, 44.9% for him apart and 44.6% 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.