Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

18

A.J. Greer

Calgary Flames Left Wing

A hundred and fourteen penalty minutes in sixty-one games, in nine minutes a night.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17COL5011-2400080.013:39
2017-18COL17033+229000130.07:24
2018-19COL15112-214000911.16:16
2020-21NJD10000700008:33
2021-22NJD911202000147.17:51
2022-23BOS615712+9114001667.69:07
2023-24 so far
Career10871320+71700011106.48:33

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

5 goals and 7 assists in 61 games for Boston — 12 points at 9:07 a night, plus-9, on 66 shots and 114 penalty minutes.

52.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 544 minutes, the 72nd percentile, on the club that won 65 games — which is the context for the number rather than a description of him. His ice went 21-13 against an expectation of 20.95-18.79.

A hundred and fourteen penalty minutes in nine minutes a night is one of the highest rates in the league.

The Finesse Game

66 attempts at a median of 25 feet, 40 per cent from inside 20, converting at 7.58 per cent. 20 points in 108 career NHL games.

There is no offensive game and the club is not buying one. He gets pucks in deep and he goes to retrieve them, and that is the extent of what happens when he has it.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 224, and this is the whole player — 170 penalty minutes in 108 career games. He fights, he hits everything, and he answers for teammates.

1.48 miles a game is the 1st percentile in the league, which is a nine-minute role spent almost entirely below the tops of the circles. The top speed is ordinary at 21.9 mph, the 29th percentile. He is not going to run anybody down; he arrives where the puck already is.

The Intangibles

Thirty-ninth overall in 2015 to Colorado, a second-round pick who has become a fourth-line enforcer, and 108 NHL games across six seasons.

He is 26. Calgary lost Milan Lucic to Boston and signed a version of him ten years younger and forty pounds lighter, which is either sensible or an admission that the club thinks its problem is toughness rather than goaltending.

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.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
  • 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.

  • hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best

    23% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 1st percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

  • nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point

    “He fights, he hits everything, and he answers for teammates.”

  • retaliatesa strength· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty

    “He fights, he hits everything, and he answers for teammates.”

  • punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “170 penalty minutes in 108 career games”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 544 minutes

Expected goals
52.7%
72nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
46.9%
29th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 21 for, 13 against. Expected: 20.9 and 18.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
29th
Numbers
72nd

The numbers rank him 43 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 with BOS · 544 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, 2022-23

The club
BOS took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.7% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 544 minutes at five-on-five — 18th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Tomas Nosek51.4%53.7%43.0%
Connor Clifton47.2%56.7%51.8%
Trent Frederic57.7%50.3%53.8%

51.4% together, 53.7% for him apart and 43.0% for Nosek apart. Nosek was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Nosek 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

84 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 36 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.