FEATURE: How NHL Edge Tracking is Transforming the Way Blackhawks Hockey is Played and Understood

A special to Blackhawks.com by former Public Address Announcer with more than 65 years of Blackhawks hockey coverage.

For years, analytics have become a useful tool for all 32 teams in the NHL. The challenge isn’t collecting the information. It’s sorting out what’s noise and what actually helps tell the story.

For the Blackhawks, that responsibility falls on Vice President of Hockey Strategy Ryan Kruse and his growing analytics department. He currently heads a team that includes eight other members, and their primary job is to track data across all levels and send useful trends to video coaches Matt Meacham and Adam Gill, who serve as the analytics liaison to head coach Jeff Blashill and his staff.

Kruse, who worked in a similar role for the Chicago Cubs with former Blackhawks associate GM Jeff Greenberg and also spent time with the Los Angeles Kings prior to being hired by the Blackhawks in 2022, holds bi-weekly meetings with every department in Hockey Operations so everyone stays on the same page.

"We throw information over the wall frequently to the coaching staff, but we let them decide what they want to use and come back with questions," Kruse said. "We’re not in their ear constantly."

NHL Edge has changed how teams utilize data. It only recently became available to the public, but NHL teams have had access to it since 2021. The league installed jersey chips that year, but puck tracking wasn’t ready yet, so the first season featured player tracking only.

Now, there’s full tracking across the NHL, and it drives most of the newer analytics.

"We’re not just looking at events," Kruse said. "We’re looking at where everyone is positioned and how each player affects movement across the ice."

For example, in simple terms, if a player has a wide-open net to shoot at from a high-danger area on the power play but misses, that would probably be assigned a 0.95 expected goal. But with a goaltender in the net and square to the shooter, that might be assigned, say, roughly a 25 percent chance, depending on where exactly the shot comes from and who the shooter is.

Essentially, public models may treat situations more generically, but if the goalie is completely out of position or there's a glaring defensive breakdown, that dramatically changes the probability.

"That context matters," Kruse said. "Public models do a good job with event data, but having full spatial awareness of every player on the ice lets us reduce noise and make metrics more predictive year over year. Public models rely on averages; we model the exact scenario. With tracking data, we can better isolate true shooting talent too. It also aligns more closely with what coaches see on the ice."

Another example of where NHL Edge data is useful is tracking load management.

When you see on the video board at the United Center that Alex Vlasic has skated more than three miles in a game, that’s not just for fun. The coaches see that and take it into consideration for utilization, not necessarily in the moment, but with the bigger picture in mind and how that workload accumulates over an 82-game season.

The minutes a player has logged may not tell the whole story when it comes to the quality of those minutes. This becomes especially important during compressed stretches of the schedule.

For example, on March 22, Vlasic logged 26:34 in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Nashville Predators. He also skated 3.7 miles in the game, which was his highest total of the season, according to NHL Edge tracking.

While that game came in the third of a three-games-in-four-days stretch, Vlasic had logged only 19:11 and 21:46 of ice time in the two games before, respectively — or in distance terms, 2.49 and 2.82 miles — and the Blackhawks had an off day the day before. The coaching staff was comfortable giving him a heavy workload because they likely had information from NHL Edge data that showed he could handle it.

“We can approximate energy expenditure, similar to how a Peloton tracks output,” Kruse said. “The difference is we have this data for every player in the league. Normally you only have your own internal data, but NHL Edge gives us league-wide access. We can evaluate players even if they’ve never been in our system."

And of course, player tracking helps in other ways, too.

Connor Bedard spent the entire offseason working on his "speed and acceleration." He said in his 2025 exit interview that he wanted to "gain another step" and "put guys on their heels a little more."

"The way I think the game, I think that could be a huge plus for me and help me create more," Bedard said.

Well, it worked, and the NHL Edge numbers back it up.

In the 2024-25 season, Bedard's max speed clocked in at 21.44 mph, which was below the 50th percentile of all NHL players. He was not satisfied with that.

In the 2025-26 season, Bedard surpassed that total in the first period of the very first game, with a top speed burst of 22.36 mph against the Florida Panthers. The numbers immediately backed up that Bedard had gotten objectively faster.

"It’s helpful, but our internal data already matches the eye test," Kruse said. "He’s in the top 20 percentage of the league in speed. That was obvious from the first game this season. He hit a top speed right away. He also covers a lot of distance per game and does it efficiently. He uses speed when needed and glides effectively. These metrics help us build profiles not just for our players, but for opponents as well, which helps with scouting and player acquisition."

Internally, the Blackhawks have spent the last several years building an internal operating system in an app called "Madhouse" that tracks players' shifts, scouting reports and just about any other useful information you can think of. Statistical information — both surface-level and advanced analytics — is included as well.

NHL Edge data is part of that system and has already helped in this area, and it will continue to be integrated moving forward. The goal is to eventually have this kind of blanket NHL Edge advanced data available at all levels, including for their own prospects in the system and draft-eligible players, to help build the Blackhawks’ next great team for years to come.

"How it’s changed here is really just the depth of our data and our models, and how we’re able to participate in things like the draft, free agency, and even pre-scouting — how the coaches prepare for games and what they need from us," Kruse said. "That’s gotten deeper every year. We’re getting more data every month. The depth of integration is ramping up. Being able to arm [Director of Amateur Scouting] Mike Doneghey with everything he needs to draft, the coaching staff with everything they need for pre-scouts, and the player development staff with everything they need, that integration is expanding across the organization."

Charlie Roumeliotis contributed to this article.