This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Zach Whitecloud
Vegas Golden Knights Defense
Undrafted, plus-21, and nine and a half goals better than expectation on his ice.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | VGK | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | — | 16:42 |
| 2019-20 | VGK | 16 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0.0 | 14:19 |
| 2020-21 | VGK | 51 | 2 | 10 | 12 | +9 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 54 | 3.7 | 17:49 |
| 2021-22 | VGK | 59 | 8 | 11 | 19 | +21 | 20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 94 | 8.5 | 18:48 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 127 | 10 | 22 | 32 | +36 | 48 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 157 | 6.4 | 17:49 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
59 games, 8 goals and 11 assists at 18:48 a night, plus-21 — the best figure on the club — twenty penalty minutes, 94 shots, one short-handed goal and one game-winner. Undrafted, and 127 games and a career plus-36 across four seasons out of it.
The Finesse Game
Eight goals from ninety-four shots is 8.5 per cent, the 92nd percentile among defencemen, and 5.09 shots per 60 is the 67th from a 53-foot median with ten per cent of his attempts from inside twenty feet.
A point shot going in at eight and a half per cent is the sort of figure that does not repeat, and eight goals is more than he scored in his first three seasons combined.
1.07 even-strength points per 60 is the 66th percentile and none of his nineteen points came on the power play.
55.4 per cent of the expected goals is the 88th percentile and 52.7 per cent of the attempts the 76th — out of 49.3 per cent offensive-zone starts, the second-hardest chair of any defenceman on this roster.
And the ledger is the file. His ice went 55-40 against an expectation of 45.42-36.5. Nine and a half goals better than the model in front and three and a half worse behind it — the only man on this club whose minutes outscored their expectation by anything like that margin, in a season the club as a whole finished 26th in the league in finishing.
The Physical Game
6.22 blocks per 60 is the 15th-most of all 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 1:41 a night short-handed.
5.30 hits per 60 is the 66th percentile at 6-2 and 210 pounds, and twenty penalty minutes in fifty-nine games — forty-eight across a 127-game career.
0.27 penalties drawn per 60 against 0.54 taken.
The Intangibles
22.6 mph is the 86th percentile among the 192 tracked defencemen, against 1.1 bursts over twenty miles an hour per 60 at the 34th and 8.41 miles per 60 at the 43rd.
A high top end with almost no sprints behind it is a shape worth naming: the speed exists and the game does not ask for it, which is what a defensive defenceman’s tracking line looks like when the legs are better than the job.
He is 25, undrafted, out of Bemidji State, with thirty-two points in 127 games. The plus-21, the nine and a half over expectation and the blocks are the case, and the second-hardest chair of any defenceman on the club is what makes the case serious. The eight goals are not going to happen again. Everything else in the file might.
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
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, and 127 games and a career plus-36 across four seasons out of it.”
“6.22 blocks per 60 is the 15th-most of all 202 defencemen who played forty games, at 1:41 a night short-handed.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,003 minutes
- Expected goals
- 55.4%
- 88th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.7%
- 76th 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: 55 for, 40 against. Expected: 45.4 and 36.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 1 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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, 2021-22 · 59 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 90th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.34 a game
- Distance
- 2.63 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.2 mph
- 56th 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 90.4
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
2021-22 · 1003 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, 2021-22
- The club
- VGK took 52.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.4% — 2.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,003 minutes at five-on-five — 61st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shea Theodore | 52.7% | 56.9% | 52.7% |
| Jonathan Marchessault | 55.8% | 55.3% | 54.4% |
| Chandler Stephenson | 54.3% | 55.9% | 49.7% |
52.7% together, 56.9% for him apart and 52.7% for Theodore apart. He was better away from Theodore, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Theodore.
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
132 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 31 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 77% from beyond forty.