Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

2026-27 edition · the board

Draft night

The board with the clock running. Mark a man Mine or Gone as the picks come in, and the page keeps the rest: the best left at each position, the drop to the next man, which categories your roster is short, and whether a man is likely to be there when it comes round to you again. It is the same projection as the board, valued the same way — skaters' rank correlation with the season 0.745 against 0.716 for last season's line; goaltenders 0.28 against 0.30, which is to say no better — and it adds no second guess of its own. Picks live in this browser and nowhere else.

Format

Above is the board's value above replacement at the position, and the number the rows are sorted by. Drop is what is lost by taking the next man at the position instead — the scarcity read. A dot marks a man the board would have gone before your next turn, if the room drafted it in order.

# Player Pos Club Age Line Above Drop Last