Frank Nazar

Last Season

Fifteen goals and 26 assists in 66 games — 41 points, minus-21, at 18:19 a night.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the best on the roster and one of the better sets of wheels in the league — genuinely explosive, with a first three strides that separate him from defencemen who are not expecting it.

The shot selection is sound: 43 per cent of his unblocked attempts inside twenty feet, median 24, and sixteen goals. He is getting to the middle, which most of this forward group does not.

Twenty-six assists at 21 in a top-six role on a bad team is a real rate.

The Physical Game

Five foot ten, 190, and light. Twenty-six penalty minutes. He is not winning wall battles and he does not need to if he keeps arriving first, but against a defence that closes quickly the speed stops being enough.

The Intangibles

Forty-two point three per cent of the expected goals, fifth percentile, in nearly nine hundred minutes.

That number should be read the way every Chicago number should. The club was 43.2 per cent. Nazar was slightly below a team that was worst in the league, in top-six minutes, at 21.

Seven points in his last ten, four of them goals. He was the thirteenth pick in 2022 and he is the second-best forward on this roster. Alongside Bedard and Moore he is one of three young centres the club is developing at once, which is either a plan or an admission.