Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2025-26 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 2025-26 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

33

Alex Nedeljkovic

San Jose Sharks Goaltender

An .8937 in 38 games in Pittsburgh, and a third organisation in five seasons.

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
2024-25PIT38141551123.1211054.894
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—1797460274983.0095143.903

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

14-15-5 in 38 games for Pittsburgh with an .8937, a 3.12 average and 1 shutout, facing 1,054 shots.

Pittsburgh’s goaltending finished 31st in the league, 26 goals worse than the chances faced, and he shared that with a man who was waived twice. He was traded to San Jose in the summer.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 205 and small for the modern position, which means the technique has to be exact and it is not always. He plays a conventional depth and he is square more often than not.

The rebound control is the weakness — pucks come off him into the slot rather than to the corners. The glove is fine and the lateral recovery is ordinary. He handles the puck genuinely well and is among the more active goaltenders in the league behind his own net.

The Mental Game

He was a Calder finalist in Carolina in 2021 with a .9317 and has not been close to that in the four seasons since — .9036, .8973, .9036, .8937.

He has been a backup on three clubs and has never lost a job through anything other than the save percentage. There is no story here beyond a goaltender who was very good for one year.

The Intangibles

Thirty-seventh overall in 2014 and 179 games with a career .9032 across four organisations.

He is 30. San Jose acquired him in the summer to play forty games in front of a 23-year-old, which is the least glamorous and most necessary job on the roster.

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
  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
  • 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.

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “**The rebound control is the weakness** — pucks come off him into the slot rather than to the corners.”

  • puck-handlinga strength· starts the breakout himself

    “**He handles the puck genuinely well** and is among the more active goaltenders in the league behind his own net.”

  • plays-deeppresent and ordinary· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He plays a conventional depth and he is square more often than not.”

  • lateral-recoverypresent and ordinary· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “The glove is fine and the lateral recovery is ordinary.”