This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nick Foligno
Chicago Blackhawks Left Wing
Plus-18 in Boston on an ice that beat its expected goals by eighteen — and almost none of it was his.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007-08 | OTT | 45 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 0 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 44 | 13.6 | 9:10 |
| 2008-09 | OTT | 81 | 17 | 15 | 32 | -10 | 59 | 7 | 0 | 2 | 145 | 11.7 | 13:41 |
| 2009-10 | OTT | 61 | 9 | 17 | 26 | +6 | 53 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 83 | 10.8 | 14:19 |
| 2010-11 | OTT | 82 | 14 | 20 | 34 | -19 | 43 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 149 | 9.4 | 15:35 |
| 2011-12 | OTT | 82 | 15 | 32 | 47 | +2 | 124 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 153 | 9.8 | 14:39 |
| 2012-13 | CBJ | 45 | 6 | 13 | 19 | +6 | 28 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 69 | 8.7 | 16:31 |
| 2013-14 | CBJ | 70 | 18 | 21 | 39 | +5 | 96 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 111 | 16.2 | 16:04 |
| 2014-15 | CBJ | 79 | 31 | 42 | 73 | +16 | 50 | 11 | 0 | 3 | 182 | 17.0 | 18:50 |
| 2015-16 | CBJ | 72 | 12 | 25 | 37 | -14 | 53 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 149 | 8.1 | 16:54 |
| 2016-17 | CBJ | 79 | 26 | 25 | 51 | -4 | 55 | 11 | 0 | 5 | 185 | 14.1 | 18:26 |
| 2017-18 | CBJ | 72 | 15 | 18 | 33 | +1 | 50 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 137 | 10.9 | 18:21 |
| 2018-19 | CBJ | 73 | 17 | 18 | 35 | +12 | 44 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 141 | 12.1 | 17:42 |
| 2019-20 | CBJ | 67 | 10 | 21 | 31 | -3 | 62 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 131 | 7.6 | 18:40 |
| 2020-21 | CBJ/TOR | 49 | 7 | 13 | 20 | +2 | 32 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 81 | 8.6 | 17:46 |
| 2021-22 | BOS | 64 | 2 | 11 | 13 | -13 | 61 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 99 | 2.0 | 12:28 |
| 2022-23 | BOS | 60 | 10 | 16 | 26 | +18 | 45 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 71 | 14.1 | 12:22 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 1081 | 215 | 310 | 525 | +5 | 875 | 50 | 0 | 32 | 1930 | 11.1 | 15:53 |
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
10 goals and 16 assists in 60 games for Boston — 26 points at 12:22 a night, plus-18, with 45 penalty minutes on 71 shots at 14.08 per cent.
50.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 658 minutes, the 55th percentile — an ordinary share. His ice went 33-14 against an expectation of 22.49-22.22, which is ten and a half goals better than forecast at one end and eight better at the other.
That is the largest gap between result and expectation of any player in this chapter, and it is not about Foligno. Boston won 65 games on plus-25.7 finishing and plus-36.3 goaltending, both first or third in the league. Every Bruin’s on-ice line in this book has that attached to it.
The Finesse Game
71 attempts at a median of 20 feet, 51 per cent from inside twenty and 12 per cent from beyond forty. Seven goals on 36 shots from inside twenty at 19.4 per cent, three from the middle band, none on the nine he took from beyond forty.
14.08 per cent is well above his 11.14 career rate across 1,081 games, and 71 shots is a small enough number that the difference is noise.
215 goals and 525 points in 1,081 games is a proper career, and at 35 it is a fourth-line one. He goes to the front of the net and he is useful there.
The Physical Game
6-0 and 210 with 45 penalty minutes, and the tracking says the legs are gone: 1.82 miles a game at the 8th percentile, 0.3 bursts over 20 mph at the 9th, and 21.9 mph at the 32nd.
What is left is the body and the willingness. He finishes his checks and he takes the punishment in front of the net, which is a fourth-line job description and one he does properly.
The Intangibles
Twenty-eighth overall by Ottawa in 2006, the son of a long-serving NHL winger, a captain in Columbus for five seasons, and 1,081 games.
The room is what Chicago is buying, and on a club that is about to hand its franchise to a nineteen-year-old, a 35-year-old former captain who has played a thousand games is a specific and deliberate purchase.
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.
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
20% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 1st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He finishes his checks and he takes the punishment in front of the net”
“The room is what Chicago is buying”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 658 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.3%
- 55th pct
- Shot attempts
- 47.1%
- 30th 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: 33 for, 14 against. Expected: 22.5 and 22.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 10 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 — 65 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 with BOS · 658 minutes at five-on-five
- Tomas Noseknow NJD45%
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
- BOS took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.3% — 3.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 658 minutes at five-on-five — 27th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tomas Nosek | 48.8% | 51.6% | 44.0% |
| Connor Clifton | 50.9% | 50.0% | 51.1% |
| Hampus Lindholm | 56.3% | 46.2% | 55.9% |
48.8% together, 51.6% for him apart and 44.0% for Nosek apart. Nosek was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Nosek than for him.
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
92 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 12% from beyond forty.