This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Connor Murphy
Chicago Blackhawks Defense
The slowest skater the tracking measured, and eighty games at nineteen minutes a night.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013-14 | PHX | 30 | 1 | 7 | 8 | +5 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 30 | 3.3 | 17:59 |
| 2014-15 | ARI | 73 | 4 | 3 | 7 | -27 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 72 | 5.6 | 16:48 |
| 2015-16 | ARI | 78 | 6 | 11 | 17 | +5 | 48 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 101 | 5.9 | 20:31 |
| 2016-17 | ARI | 77 | 2 | 15 | 17 | -13 | 45 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 81 | 2.5 | 19:11 |
| 2017-18 | CHI | 76 | 2 | 12 | 14 | -3 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 109 | 1.8 | 16:22 |
| 2018-19 | CHI | 52 | 5 | 8 | 13 | +12 | 40 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 84 | 5.9 | 19:29 |
| 2019-20 | CHI | 58 | 5 | 14 | 19 | +2 | 27 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 117 | 4.3 | 21:15 |
| 2020-21 | CHI | 50 | 3 | 12 | 15 | +1 | 35 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 78 | 3.9 | 22:09 |
| 2021-22 | CHI | 57 | 4 | 6 | 10 | -14 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 71 | 5.6 | 21:46 |
| 2022-23 | CHI | 80 | 7 | 6 | 13 | -10 | 69 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 85 | 8.2 | 19:23 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 631 | 39 | 94 | 133 | -42 | 397 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 828 | 4.7 | 19:23 |
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
7 goals and 6 assists in 80 games — 13 points at 19:23 a night, minus-10, with 69 penalty minutes.
41.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,365 minutes, the 8th percentile. His ice went 43-62 against an expectation of 41.21-57.21.
38.5 per cent of his even-strength shifts started in the offensive zone, the 7th percentile — the hard end of a bad club’s deployment, which is the job he was kept for.
The Finesse Game
85 attempts at a median of 55 feet, 83 per cent from beyond forty and 7 per cent from inside twenty. Four goals on 64 shots from beyond forty, at 6.25 per cent, which is nearly double the league rate for a defenceman from out there and is still four goals.
His shot is 88.0 mph, the 30th percentile. There is no offensive game here and there never has been — 39 goals and 133 points in 631 career games, a 4.71 per cent career shooting rate.
He is on the ice to defend, and the shot chart is what a defenceman does with the puck when the alternative is giving it away.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 212, and the tracking numbers are the most extreme in this book. His top speed was 20.5 mph, the 1st percentile among the 574 skaters the feed covers, and he registered 0.0 bursts over 20 mph a game, the 0th. Across a full season of nineteen-minute nights he did not once get above twenty miles an hour.
That is a genuinely remarkable thing to survive on, and it is worth being careful about what it means. It does not mean he is finished; he played 80 games in the hardest defensive role on the roster and his ice conceded about what the chances predicted. It means the entire game is built on reading the play early enough that speed never becomes the question. He arrives where the puck is going instead of chasing where it went, and 2.64 miles a game at the 56th percentile says he is not standing still either.
69 penalty minutes and a willingness to make contact in front of his own net.
The Intangibles
Twentieth overall by Phoenix in 2011, ten seasons, 631 games, and the last man left from a Chicago defence corps that has been dismantled twice.
He is 30, he is slow in a way the tracking can now prove, and he keeps playing nineteen minutes a night. That combination is the argument this book has been having with itself all year about what skating grades are for.
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
83.2% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
4 of 89 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.5%, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- durable· was available
80 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
35% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 3rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He arrives where the puck is going instead of chasing where it went”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,365 minutes
- Expected goals
- 41.9%
- 8th pct
- Shot attempts
- 42.4%
- 6th 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: 43 for, 62 against. Expected: 41.2 and 57.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 5 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 141 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 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 · 1365 minutes at five-on-five
- Jack Johnsonnow COL26%
- Isaak Phillips8%
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
- CHI took 42.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.9% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,365 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jarred Tinordi | 39.9% | 42.9% | 39.7% |
| Jack Johnson | 36.7% | 43.9% | 41.8% |
| Andreas Athanasiou | 42.3% | 41.7% | 42.9% |
39.9% together, 42.9% for him apart and 39.7% for Tinordi apart. He was better away from Tinordi, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Tinordi.
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
107 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 60 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 83% from beyond forty.