Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

5

Connor Murphy

Chicago Blackhawks Defense

Blocks shots and clears the front of his own net, which on this roster makes him the only one who does.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2013-14PHX30178+510001303.317:59
2014-15ARI73437-2742000725.616:48
2015-16ARI7861117+5481011015.920:31
2016-17ARI7721517-1345011812.519:11
2017-18CHI7621214-3340001091.816:22
2018-19CHI525813+1240001845.919:29
2019-20CHI5851419+2270001174.321:15
2020-21CHI5031215+135101783.922:09
2021-22CHI574610-1447001715.621:46
2022-23CHI807613-1069020858.219:23
2023-24CHI46268-1940000513.919:50
2024-25 so far
Career67741100141-614372368794.719:25

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-six games, 2 goals and 6 assists, 19:50 a night and minus-19. He took 43.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 785 minutes, the 11th percentile, and his ice went 26-36 against an expectation of 28.28-36.98.

The chances and the goals agree almost exactly, which means the shifts were what they looked like. He is 31 and has now missed a significant part of four of the last six seasons.

The Finesse Game

Fifty-one shots at a median of 56 feet with 79 per cent from beyond 40. Two of them went in. He is not part of the offence and has scored more than 5 goals in a season once in eleven years.

The puck leaves his stick quickly and it usually leaves in the right direction, which is the whole of the puck game. Forty-one goals and 100 assists in 677 games is the record of a man who was never asked.

The Physical Game

He blocks shots and clears the front of his own net, and at 6-4 and 212 both things are done properly rather than gestured at. Four hundred and thirty-seven penalty minutes in 677 games is the rate of a defenceman who plays the front of the net for a living and occasionally pays for it.

He is hard to move from the paint on a penalty kill and that is where his value on this club sits.

The Intangibles

Taken 20th overall by Phoenix in 2011 and now in his eighth season in Chicago, through the end of one era and most of a rebuild. He is the senior defenceman in the room and on a blue line with a nineteen-year-old and a twenty-year-old on it the value of that is not on the scoresheet.

The health is the whole question. Forty-six games is not enough to matter and it is becoming the pattern.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 785 minutes

Expected goals
43.3%
12th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
45.1%
17th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 26 for, 36 against. Expected: 28.3 and 37.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
7th
Numbers
12th

The 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 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 · 785 minutes at five-on-five

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 43.3% — 1.4 above the club he did it on.
The role
785 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Kevin Korchinski41.7%44.3%40.5%
Jason Dickinson39.0%45.0%43.3%
Philipp Kurashev41.4%43.9%43.1%

41.7% together, 44.3% for him apart and 40.5% for Korchinski 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

68 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 47 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.