This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Colin Blackwell
Dallas Stars Center
Five foot eight, a seventh-round pick, and 235 games at 31 — the entire career is the achievement.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | NSH | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.0 | 9:44 |
| 2019-20 | NSH | 27 | 3 | 7 | 10 | +7 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 31 | 9.7 | 10:57 |
| 2020-21 | NYR | 47 | 12 | 10 | 22 | +2 | 15 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 64 | 18.8 | 14:00 |
| 2021-22 | SEA/TOR | 58 | 10 | 10 | 20 | 0 | 14 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 77 | 13.0 | 11:56 |
| 2022-23 | CHI | 53 | 2 | 8 | 10 | -16 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 53 | 3.8 | 11:48 |
| 2023-24 | CHI | 44 | 8 | 4 | 12 | -2 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 88 | 9.1 | 14:30 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 235 | 35 | 39 | 74 | -10 | 57 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 318 | 11.0 | 12:38 |
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
Forty-four games in Chicago, 8 goals and 4 assists with 1 on the power play, 14:30 a night and minus-2. He converted 9.09 per cent of 88 shots.
He took 43.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 552 minutes, the 13th percentile, and his ice went 13-17 against an expectation of 17.93-23.16. Chicago finished 32nd in shot share and the number is mostly that; it is still the worst chance share on this roster by five points.
The Finesse Game
Eighty-eight shots in 44 games at a median of 30 feet is a high volume for a fourth-line winger. Eight went in.
Thirty-five goals and 39 assists in 235 career games. There is no playmaking game and there never was — the puck goes to the net or to the wall.
The Physical Game
He is 5-8 and 181 and finishes his checks against men eight inches taller. Ten penalty minutes in 44 games is a low rate for a forward who initiates that much.
He forechecks aggressively and he is first in on the puck, and at that size it is the only way the shift works. He does not win the wall against defencemen.
The Intangibles
A seventh-round pick, 194th overall in 2011 out of North Andover, four years at Harvard, four in the minors, and a first regular job at 27. He has now played 235 games.
He is 31 and the thirteenth forward on a hundred-point club. For a 5-8 seventh-round pick, the career is the story and the numbers are a footnote.
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
31.5% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 93rd percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He forechecks aggressively and he is first in on the puck, and at that size it is the only way the shift works.”
“He does not win the wall against defencemen.”
“He is 5-8 and 181 and finishes his checks against men eight inches taller.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 552 minutes
- Expected goals
- 43.6%
- 13th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.4%
- 39th 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: 13 for, 17 against. Expected: 17.9 and 23.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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 · 44 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 70th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.09 a game
- Distance
- 2.39 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 89.1 mph
- 65th 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 with CHI · 552 minutes at five-on-five
- Ryan Donato15%
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 43.6% — 1.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 552 minutes at five-on-five — 21st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jason Dickinson | 49.8% | 32.3% | 44.6% |
| Joey Anderson | 44.9% | 42.3% | 45.1% |
| Alex Vlasic | 57.3% | 35.3% | 44.4% |
49.8% together, 32.3% for him apart and 44.6% for Dickinson 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
108 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 31% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.