Nick Blankenburg
Nashville Predators Defense
5-9 and 177 pounds, undrafted out of Michigan, playing 19:33 a night — and minus-2 on a club where six regulars were worse than minus-23.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | CBJ | 7 | 1 | 2 | 3 | -3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 13 | 7.7 | 17:34 |
| 2022-23 | CBJ | 36 | 4 | 10 | 14 | -16 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 50 | 8.0 | 19:10 |
| 2023-24 | CBJ | 12 | 1 | 0 | 1 | +1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10.0 | 16:13 |
| 2024-25 | NSH | 60 | 4 | 12 | 16 | -2 | 24 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 84 | 4.8 | 19:33 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 115 | 10 | 24 | 34 | -20 | 48 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 157 | 6.4 | 18:58 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
60 games, 4 goals and 12 assists for 16 points at 19:33 a night, on 84 shots at 4.76 per cent. 24 penalty minutes. Minus-2 — the best figure among the club’s regular defencemen by sixteen.
That number is a useful demonstration of why the statistic survives for tradition rather than for judgement. His chance share was 48.4 per cent, the 35th percentile, and his on-ice goals were 28-43 against an expected 34.08-36.29 — outscored by fifteen at five-on-five and minus-2 on the season. Empty nets, shorthanded time and the ordinary noise of who happened to be over the boards account for the whole difference.
The Finesse Game
The smallest defenceman in this edition at 5-9 and 177 pounds, and the skating is the only reason it works at all. He escapes pressure by turning into it, gets to loose pucks first because he reads where they are going, and moves the puck early because holding it is not an option available to him.
17 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet and 51 per cent from beyond 40, and 4.76 per cent on 84 attempts is a shot with no weight behind it.
The Physical Game
He cannot clear a crease and does not pretend otherwise. In a corner against a 210-pound winger the puck is not going to be his.
What he does instead is arrive early enough that the battle does not have to happen, and when it happens anyway he does not stop competing. 24 penalty minutes is a small number for a small man playing nineteen minutes a night.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, captain at Michigan, signed as a college free agent, and now on his second NHL club playing top-four minutes. None of that was projected by anybody.
He is 27 and the ceiling is what he is doing now — which is more than the great majority of fifth-round picks ever manage.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 879 minutes
- Expected goals
- 48.4%
- 35th pct
- Shot attempts
- 49.7%
- 49th 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: 28 for, 43 against. Expected: 34.1 and 36.3.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 29 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 61 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
2024-25 · 879 minutes at five-on-five
- Brady Skjei84%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- NSH took 49.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.4% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 879 minutes at five-on-five — 42nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brady Skjei | 46.7% | 58.0% | 47.0% |
| Filip Forsberg | 46.2% | 49.7% | 48.1% |
| Ryan O'Reilly | 46.0% | 49.5% | 50.1% |
46.7% together, 58.0% for him apart and 47.0% for Skjei apart. He was better away from Skjei, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Skjei.
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
121 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 17% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 51% from beyond forty.