This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →
Nick Blankenburg
Columbus Blue Jackets Defense
Five-foot-nine, undrafted, and nineteen minutes a night in his first real NHL run.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 43 | 5 | 12 | 17 | -19 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 63 | 7.9 | 18:54 |
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
4 goals and 10 assists in 36 games, minus-16, 19:10 a night — a genuine top-four workload for an undrafted 24-year-old.
47.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 598 minutes, the 34th percentile — the best figure of any Columbus defenceman, which says more about the blue line than about him. His ice went 23-39 against an expectation of 24.70-27.49: eleven goals worse than the chances at the defensive end.
Two seasons, 43 games, 17 points.
The Finesse Game
50 shots at a median of 46 feet, 59 per cent from beyond forty and 14 per cent from inside twenty — the least extreme point-shooter’s distribution on this blue line.
Beyond forty: 24 shots, none. Inside forty: 26 shots, four goals, 15.38 per cent.
Every goal from close range, again. 91.5 mph at the 55th percentile.
14 points in 36 games is a 0.39-a-game rate, which for a defenceman in a first NHL season is a real number.
The Physical Game
5-9 and 177 pounds — one of the shortest defencemen in this edition, level at 5-9 with Spurgeon, Bryson and Krug — and the reason he went undrafted.
22.6 mph at the 70th percentile, 2.53 miles a game at the 45th, 0.5 bursts a game at the 26th. The skating is good and not exceptional, which for a player this size is the problem: the size demands elite feet and the measurement says they are merely fine.
16 penalty minutes in 36 games. He competes in the hard areas and cannot win them, and the eleven goals above expectation his ice conceded is partly that.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of Michigan, where he was the captain, and signed by Columbus at 24.
He played 36 games and nineteen minutes in them, on a club with nothing behind Peeke and Gudbranson. That is an opportunity and it is not evidence of anything yet. The size means he has to be right about everything, every shift, and 5-9 defencemen who manage that are among the rarest players in the sport.
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.
- 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.
“Undrafted, out of Michigan, where he was the captain, and signed by Columbus at 24.”
“out of Michigan, where he was the captain”
“He competes in the hard areas and cannot win them”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 598 minutes
- Expected goals
- 47.3%
- 34th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.6%
- 26th 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: 23 for, 39 against. Expected: 24.7 and 27.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 17 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 638 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, 2022-23 · 36 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.53 a game
- Distance
- 2.53 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.5 mph
- 47th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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
2022-23 · 598 minutes at five-on-five
- Andrew Peeke38%
- Zach Werenski14%
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
- CBJ took 44.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.3% — 3.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 598 minutes at five-on-five — 22nd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boone Jenner | 51.1% | 45.1% | 47.1% |
| Andrew Peeke | 46.3% | 47.9% | 43.1% |
| Johnny Gaudreau | 50.1% | 45.9% | 47.4% |
51.1% together, 45.1% for him apart and 47.1% for Jenner 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
71 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 14% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 59% from beyond forty.