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.
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Alex Belzile

Photo by TheAHL, CC BY 2.0

Alex Belzile

Montréal Canadiens Right Wing #60

35 years old, undrafted, and finally getting a real run of NHL games.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21MTL2011-1000030.010:39
2021-22MTL1100004000130.010:24
2022-23MTL3168140130004015.012:08
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—446915-1170005610.711:38

No games in 2025-26. The season above is the last one he played, and everything on this page should be read with that gap in it.

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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.

2022-23

6 goals and 14 points in 31 games on 12 minutes a night, even on the plus-minus. Across 44 career NHL games he has 15 points, which means almost all of his professional career has happened somewhere else. He has not played an NHL game since, 3 seasons ago now.

The Finesse Game

Better than a career minor-leaguer’s usually is, which is why he kept getting looks. 40 shots in 31 games is an aggressive rate for a fourth-liner, and 6 goals from that is honest finishing.

He is a smart player who supports the puck properly and does not make mistakes with it. What he lacks is the speed and the pure skill to do it against top competition for long stretches.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 198, and he plays hard. He forechecks, finishes checks, and goes to the net — the standard requirements for a player trying to hold a job at his age.

The Intangibles

More than 500 games in the American league and a captaincy there before finally getting a run at this level in his thirties. That is a career built entirely on refusing to stop.

There is no projection here in the usual sense. He is a thirteenth forward who will do the job properly for as long as the club needs him to, and he has already outlasted every reasonable expectation.