This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Alex Lyon
Detroit Red Wings Goaltender
Undrafted, thirty-nine games in six seasons, and then forty-four in one at exactly his career rate.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | PHI | 11 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 22 | 2.75 | 0 | 232 | .905 |
| 2018-19 | PHI | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 5.08 | 0 | 31 | .806 |
| 2019-20 | PHI | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 3.55 | 0 | 73 | .890 |
| 2020-21 | PHI | 6 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 18 | 3.33 | 0 | 169 | .893 |
| 2021-22 | CAR | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 2.93 | 0 | 65 | .908 |
| 2022-23 | FLA | 15 | 9 | 4 | 2 | 43 | 2.89 | 1 | 488 | .912 |
| 2023-24 | DET | 44 | 21 | 18 | 5 | 127 | 3.05 | 2 | 1325 | .904 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 83 | 37 | 29 | 10 | 230 | 3.05 | 3 | 2383 | .903 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
Forty-four games, 21-18-5, a .9042 save percentage, a 3.05 average and 2 shutouts on 1,325 shots.
He had played 39 games in six seasons before this one. A .9042 behind the 27th-ranked chance suppression in hockey is a respectable season and it is almost exactly his career .9035 across 83 games — which is to say he did what he has always done, for the first time at volume.
The Physical Game
He is 6-1 and 199 and plays deep and square rather than aggressively. He is not big for a modern goaltender and the game depends on being in the right place early rather than on covering ground late.
The rebound control is the weakness, and on a club that concedes from the slot it is the wrong weakness to have. Against a clean shot from the perimeter he is reliable; against the second one he is not.
The Mental Game
Twenty-one wins on a club that won forty-one, at 31, in a first real season. Whatever else is true of him, six years of waiting did not leave a mark on the numbers when the chance came.
He has now been a starter for four months of his life. There is no evidence either way about what a second season of it does.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of Baudette, Minnesota, three years at Yale, and a career that took him through Philadelphia, Carolina and Florida before anybody gave him a net.
Detroit has signed Cam Talbot. The most likely outcome of last season is that it was the best year of his career and he goes back to being a backup, which is not a criticism of a man who was never given anything.
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.
“He is 6-1 and 199 and plays deep and square rather than aggressively.”
“The rebound control is the weakness, and on a club that concedes from the slot it is the wrong weakness to have.”
“Undrafted, out of Baudette, Minnesota, three years at Yale, and a career that took him through Philadelphia, Carolina and Florida before anybody gave him a net.”