Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2024-25 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 2024-25 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

33

Alex Nedeljkovic

Pittsburgh Penguins Goaltender

Eighteen wins in 38 games on a save percentage one point below the man who lost twenty-five.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2016-17CAR100000.000171.000
2018-19CAR110022.00026.923
2019-20CAR4121113.05097.887
2020-21CAR231553441.903648.932
2021-22DET59202491783.3141796.901
2022-23DET15572493.530466.895
2023-24PIT3818771022.9711039.902
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—1416045223862.9684089.906

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

38 games, 18-7-7 with a .9018 and a 2.97, 1 shutout, facing 1,039 shots.

One point of save percentage below Tristan Jarry and eighteen wins to Jarry’s nineteen, in thirteen fewer games. Of the 53 goaltenders who played twenty-five games last season he ranked 23rd by save percentage, which is the middle of the league and better than the record of the club in front of him suggests.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 205, one of only six goaltenders in this edition under 6-1.

He is short for the position now and compensates by challenging out and cutting angles rather than waiting in the paint, which makes the low shot easier and the cross-ice pass harder. He handles the puck well enough to be a third defenceman on a retrieval and does it more readily than any goaltender on this roster.

The Mental Game

A career .9056 across 141 games and 60 wins.

The .9321 in 23 games for Carolina four years ago is the ceiling and nothing since has come near it; the three seasons after it have run .9009, .8948 and .9018. He is steady rather than spectacular and does not compound a bad goal, which is most of why an 18-7-7 record came out of an ordinary save percentage.

The Intangibles

Thirty-seventh overall in 2014 by Carolina, seven seasons, three organisations, and 141 games.

He is 28 and has never played more than 59 games in a season. Eighteen wins in 38 games is the best argument he has made since Carolina, and it arrives at the moment the club in front of him needs somebody to make one.

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

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.

  • puck-handlinga strength· starts the breakout himself

    “He handles the puck well enough to be a third defenceman on a retrieval and does it more readily than any goaltender on this roster.”

  • plays-aggressivea strength· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “He is short for the position now and compensates by challenging out and cutting angles rather than waiting in the paint, which makes the low shot easier and the cross-ice pass harder.”

  • rebound-controla strength· where the second chance ends up

    “He is steady rather than spectacular and does not compound a bad goal, which is most of why an 18-7-7 record came out of an ordinary save percentage.”