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

Wyatt Kaiser

Thirty-two games at 21 and the best chance share of any defenceman who actually played here.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2022-23	CHI	9	0	3	3	-4	4	0	0	0	14	0.0	18:36
2023-24	CHI	32	0	7	7	0	22	0	0	0	18	0.0	17:19
2024-25 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	41	0	10	10	-4	26	0	0	0	32	0.0	17:36

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

Thirty-two games, no goals and 7 assists, 17:19 a night and exactly even. He took 43.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 483 minutes, the 15th percentile, and his ice went 17-20 against an expectation of 16.39-20.94.

That is the highest chance share of any defenceman on the roster who earned it in Chicago, on a club that took 41.9 per cent as a whole. It is a small sample and it is the only encouraging defensive number here.

The Finesse Game

Eighteen shots in 32 games and none of them went in — 4 per cent from inside 20 feet, 81 per cent from beyond 40. He has no goals in 41 career games and there is nothing in the shot to suggest that changes soon.

Ten assists in those 41 games is the better half. He skates well enough to retreat, turn and start the breakout under a forecheck, and the first pass is quick and low-risk.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 190 and does not win many battles below the goal line. Twenty-two penalty minutes in 32 games is a high rate for a young defenceman and most of them are the stick fouls of a man beaten to a spot.

The defending is positional and it works when the play is in front of him. It does not work when a heavy forward has body position in the corner.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2020 out of Minnesota, three years at Minnesota-Duluth, and now a professional at 22. He is fourth or fifth in a queue of young Chicago defencemen and the least talked about of them.

Thirty-two games is not a verdict. The share is the reason to keep looking.

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.

fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“Twenty-two penalty minutes in 32 games is a high rate for a young defenceman and most of them are the stick fouls of a man beaten to a spot.”
hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He is 6-0 and 190 and does not win many battles below the goal line.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 483 minutes

Expected goals: 43.9%; 15th pct
Shot attempts: 43.4%; 10th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 17 for, 20 against. Expected: 16.4 and 20.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

1st

Numbers

15th

The two rank him within 14 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 50 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, 2023-24 · 32 games

Top speed: 22.2 mph; 72nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.75 a game
Distance: 2.45 miles a game
Hardest shot: 83.7 mph; 15th pct

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

2023-24 · 483 minutes at five-on-five

Nikita Zaitsevoff the roster24%
Jarred Tinordioff the roster23%
Isaak Phillips20%

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 43.9% — 2.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: 483 minutes at five-on-five — 17th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Lukas Reichel	45.7%	43.2%	37.2%
Ryan Donato	46.8%	42.6%	41.6%
Tyler Johnson	48.8%	41.9%	37.5%

45.7% together, 43.2% for him apart and 37.2% for Reichel apart. Reichel was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Reichel 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

27 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 0 of them goals. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 81% from beyond forty.