This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Zach Whitecloud
Vegas Golden Knights Defense
Undrafted, the 84th percentile of chances, and the first Indigenous player from Manitoba to win a Stanley Cup.
| 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 | VGK | 59 | 5 | 7 | 12 | +10 | 41 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 64 | 7.8 | 17:07 |
| 2023-24 | VGK | 61 | 2 | 12 | 14 | -3 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 51 | 3.9 | 17:35 |
| 2024-25 | VGK | 74 | 4 | 9 | 13 | +7 | 37 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 72 | 5.6 | 17:31 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 321 | 21 | 50 | 71 | +50 | 158 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 344 | 6.1 | 17:35 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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 9 assists in 74 games — 13 points at 17:31 a night, plus-7, with 37 penalty minutes on 72 shots.
53.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 84th percentile. His ice went 41-39 against an expectation of 47.60-41.01 — ten goals better than expected for and seven worse against, on a second pairing.
The Finesse Game
72 attempts in 74 games at a median of 54 feet with 74 per cent from beyond 40 and 4 per cent from inside 20, and 4 goals. He does not shoot.
9 assists. The first pass is simple and quick and that is the whole puck game; under a heavy forecheck he goes off the wall rather than attempting anything.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 210 and he plays a hard game. He clears the front of his own net, he blocks shots, and he finishes checks.
37 penalty minutes in 74 games is a moderate rate. He is not an agitator and the physicality is structural rather than provocative.
The Intangibles
Undrafted out of Bemidji State, and he signed here in 2018 — 321 games and 71 points, all of it in one uniform, with a Stanley Cup in 2023.
He is 28. He is Sioux Valley Dakota Nation and among the small number of Indigenous players to have won a Stanley Cup, and the whole file is an undrafted college defenceman who has played 321 NHL games.
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 Bemidji State**, and he signed here in 2018 — **321 games and 71 points**, all of it in one uniform, with a Stanley Cup in 2023.”
“He clears the front of his own net, he blocks shots, and he finishes checks.”
“He clears the front of his own net, he blocks shots, and he finishes checks.”
“He clears the front of his own net, he blocks shots, and he finishes checks.”
“He is not an agitator and the physicality is structural rather than provocative.”
“under a heavy forecheck he goes off the wall rather than attempting anything.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,152 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.7%
- 83rd pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.8%
- 71st 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: 41 for, 39 against. Expected: 47.6 and 41.0.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 41 points above where the report does. 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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, 2024-25 · 74 games
- Top speed
- 21.6 mph
- 48th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.50 a game
- Distance
- 2.43 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 95.0 mph
- 78th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 1152 minutes at five-on-five
- Noah Hanifin38%
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, 2024-25
- The club
- VGK took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.7% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 1,152 minutes at five-on-five — 81st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noah Hanifin | 58.6% | 50.3% | 54.4% |
| Nicolas Hague | 49.7% | 55.9% | 46.5% |
| Pavel Dorofeyev | 56.0% | 52.8% | 57.9% |
58.6% together, 50.3% for him apart and 54.4% for Hanifin 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
109 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.