Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

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

71

Nick Foligno

Chicago Blackhawks Left Wing

Thirty-six years old, 8 power-play goals from the front of the net, and the first shorthanded goal of a seventeen-year career.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2007-08OTT456390200004413.69:10
2008-09OTT81171532-105970214511.713:41
2009-10OTT6191726+6532028310.814:19
2010-11OTT82142034-19435031499.415:35
2011-12OTT82153247+21241031539.814:39
2012-13CBJ4561319+628102698.716:31
2013-14CBJ70182139+59630511116.216:04
2014-15CBJ79314273+1650110318217.018:50
2015-16CBJ72122537-14530021498.116:54
2016-17CBJ79262551-455110518514.118:26
2017-18CBJ72151833+15020113710.918:21
2018-19CBJ73171835+124420214112.117:42
2019-20CBJ67102131-3622011317.618:40
2020-21CBJ/TOR4971320+232100818.617:46
2021-22BOS6421113-1361000992.012:28
2022-23BOS60101626+18452017114.112:22
2023-24CHI74172037-295781014611.617:46
2024-25 so far
Career1155232330562-2493258132207611.216:01

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

Seventy-four games at 36, 17 goals and 20 assists, 8 of the goals on the power play and 1 shorthanded — the only shorthanded goal of his 1,155-game career. He played 17:46 a night and finished minus-29.

He took 43.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 998 minutes, the 10th percentile, and his ice went 24-47 against an expectation of 33.50-44.50. Seventeen goals at 36 on the club that scored fewest in the league, most of them from three feet out, is the most useful thing anybody here did.

The Finesse Game

He takes 58 per cent of his attempts from inside 20 feet at a median of 15 — the most net-front profile on the roster — and converted 11.64 per cent of 146 shots. There is nothing about the shot itself: it is a deflection, a rebound and a stick on a loose puck in the blue paint, and he has scored 232 goals in a career doing exactly that.

The hands in tight are better than a man his age has any right to and the passing out of the corner is quick and low.

The Physical Game

He goes to the front of the net first and stays there, and at 6-0 and 210 he is very hard to move once he has set. Nine hundred and thirty-two penalty minutes in 1,155 games is the record of a man who has spent seventeen years in the most crowded three feet on the ice.

He still finishes his checks and he still answers for a teammate. Fifty-seven penalty minutes in 74 games at 36 is not a decline.

The Intangibles

The 28th pick in 2006, a captain in Columbus, and now the senior voice in a room built around a nineteen-year-old. He played the first line all season and took the hardest defensive shifts among the forwards, which at 36 on a club that won twenty-three games is a decision to keep working.

What Chicago is paying for is that a teenager watches a seventeen-year professional prepare for a Tuesday in February, and the eight power-play goals are the bonus.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 998 minutes

Expected goals
43%
10th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43.8%
11th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 24 for, 47 against. Expected: 33.5 and 44.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
40th
Numbers
10th

The report ranks him 30 points above where the numbers do. 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 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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 · 998 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 43.0% — 1.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 998 minutes at five-on-five — 57th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Philipp Kurashev41.4%44.3%43.8%
Connor Bedard41.6%43.9%41.9%
Kevin Korchinski43.7%42.5%39.8%

41.4% together, 44.3% for him apart and 43.8% for Kurashev 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

183 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 58% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.