Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.

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15

Alex Newhook

Montreal Canadiens Center

Fifteen goals in 55 games at a 17.65 per cent conversion, which is not going to happen again.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21COL6033+5200080.013:41
2021-22COL71132033+111230511311.513:34
2022-23COL8214163002210311612.113:57
2023-24MTL55151934-11182028517.616:56
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—2144258100+554601032213.014:35

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

55 games, 15 goals and 19 assists for 34 points, 2 on the power play, 18 penalty minutes, 16:56 a night and minus-11. He took 46.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 727 minutes, the 30th percentile, and his ice went 36-34 against an expectation of 31.99-36.40.

Four goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and two fewer conceded than they called for. Thirty-four points in fifty-five games in a first season here, and the conversion rate underneath it is not repeatable.

The Finesse Game

131 attempts at a median of 21 feet with 49 per cent from inside 20, 85 of them on goal, converted at 17.7 per cent against a career 13.04.

58 career assists in 214 games. Fifteen goals on eighty-five shots is a rate nobody sustains. What is real is the skating: he is the fastest forward on this roster and he gets to the interior with it rather than around the outside.

The Physical Game

He is 5-11 and 200 and does not initiate.

18 penalty minutes in 55 games is a low rate. He does not forecheck by force and does not win many walls, and the whole of his defensive value is the speed back.

The Intangibles

Sixteenth overall in 2019 by Colorado, out of St. John’s, two years at Boston College, four seasons, and 100 points in 214 games.

He is 23 and Montreal paid a first-round pick and more for him. Thirty-four points in fifty-five games looks like a step forward and the shooting percentage says be careful about how large a step.

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
  • 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.

  • clutch· scored his goals when the game was still live

    3 of his 15 goals late or in overtime, 91st percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure barely repeats (0.06) · 10% keep it

  • transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “What is real is the skating: he is the fastest forward on this roster and he gets to the interior with it rather than around the outside.”

  • forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck

    “He does not forecheck by force and does not win many walls, and the whole of his defensive value is the speed back.”

  • wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line

    “He does not forecheck by force and does not win many walls, and the whole of his defensive value is the speed back.”

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He is 5-11 and 200 and does not initiate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 727 minutes

Expected goals
46.8%
31st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
44.5%
15th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 36 for, 34 against. Expected: 32.0 and 36.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
39th
Numbers
31st

The two rank him within 8 points of one another. 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.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 55 games

Top speed
22.5 mph
68th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
2.36 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
2.63 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
87.3 mph
53rd pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 727 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, 2023-24

The club
MTL took 46.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.8% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 727 minutes at five-on-five — 34th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Joel Armia48.1%45.7%52.4%
Mike Matheson44.4%48.1%44.5%
Brendan Gallagher51.9%43.8%49.6%

48.1% together, 45.7% for him apart and 52.4% for Armia apart. Armia was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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

131 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.