This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Chris Tanev
Calgary Flames Defense
Undrafted, 717 games, the 99th percentile in five-on-five share, and one goal.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-11 | VAN | 29 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0.0 | 13:47 |
| 2011-12 | VAN | 25 | 0 | 2 | 2 | +10 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 15 | 0.0 | 16:43 |
| 2012-13 | VAN | 38 | 2 | 5 | 7 | +4 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 20 | 10.0 | 17:17 |
| 2013-14 | VAN | 64 | 6 | 11 | 17 | +12 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 65 | 9.2 | 20:44 |
| 2014-15 | VAN | 70 | 2 | 18 | 20 | +8 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 53 | 3.8 | 21:05 |
| 2015-16 | VAN | 69 | 4 | 14 | 18 | -8 | 8 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 42 | 9.5 | 21:45 |
| 2016-17 | VAN | 53 | 2 | 8 | 10 | +3 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 39 | 5.1 | 20:21 |
| 2017-18 | VAN | 42 | 2 | 9 | 11 | +7 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 6.5 | 19:47 |
| 2018-19 | VAN | 55 | 2 | 10 | 12 | +3 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 51 | 3.9 | 20:10 |
| 2019-20 | VAN | 69 | 2 | 18 | 20 | +4 | 41 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 45 | 4.4 | 19:32 |
| 2020-21 | CGY | 56 | 2 | 10 | 12 | +15 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 66 | 3.0 | 21:44 |
| 2021-22 | CGY | 82 | 6 | 22 | 28 | +35 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 88 | 6.8 | 20:28 |
| 2022-23 | CGY | 65 | 1 | 12 | 13 | +7 | 21 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 75 | 1.3 | 20:07 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 717 | 31 | 140 | 171 | +100 | 170 | 2 | 1 | 10 | 605 | 5.1 | 20:01 |
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
1 goal and 12 assists in 65 games — 13 points at 20:07 a night, plus-7, on 75 shots and 21 penalty minutes.
61.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,093 minutes. That is the 99th percentile in the league. His ice went 45-43 against an expectation of 53.38-33.8 — eight goals of scoring missing and nine more conceded than the chances predicted, a seventeen-goal swing against a man whose shifts were the best in hockey. That is what a .892 goaltender does to a defenceman’s record.
The Finesse Game
75 attempts at a median of 50 feet, 80 per cent from beyond 40 and 4 per cent from inside 20, converting at 1.33 per cent. 31 goals in 717 career games.
There is no offensive game and there has never been any pretence of one. The first pass is simple, early and correct, and he has built a thirteen-year career on never being the reason a play went wrong.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 200 and he blocks shots with a willingness that has cost him a remarkable number of bones — the injury history is long and almost all of it is the price of standing in front of pucks.
He defends the rush better than anybody on this roster: the gap is closed early, the stick is in the lane, and forwards arrive at the blue line with nowhere to go. 170 penalty minutes in 717 games says he does it without fouling, which is the hardest part.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of the Ontario junior system and RIT, and 717 NHL games later he is one of the most respected defensive defencemen of his era.
He is 33, in the last year of his contract, on a club that missed the playoffs. He is the single most obvious deadline rental in the league — a right-shot shutdown defenceman with a Cup contender’s exact profile — and everybody in the sport knows it, including him.
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.
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
61.2% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 53.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +8.1, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“Undrafted, out of the Ontario junior system and RIT”
“he blocks shots with a willingness that has cost him a remarkable number of bones”
“the gap is closed early, the stick is in the lane, and forwards arrive at the blue line with nowhere to go”
“He defends the rush better than anybody on this roster”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,093 minutes
- Expected goals
- 61.2%
- 99th pct
- Shot attempts
- 60.2%
- 98th 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: 45 for, 43 against. Expected: 53.4 and 33.8.
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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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 · 1093 minutes at five-on-five
- Noah Hanifin29%
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
- CGY took 55.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 61.2% — 6.0 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,093 minutes at five-on-five — 69th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| MacKenzie Weegar | 58.8% | 64.0% | 58.1% |
| Andrew Mangiapane | 62.6% | 60.5% | 54.9% |
| Blake Coleman | 64.0% | 59.9% | 56.2% |
58.8% together, 64.0% for him apart and 58.1% for Weegar apart. He was better away from Weegar, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Weegar.
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
90 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 48 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 80% from beyond forty.