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.

13

Alexey Toropchenko

St. Louis Blues Right Wing

6-6, 324 games, and the 3rd percentile.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22STL28202-915000434.710:43
2022-23STL6910919+6120108611.612:05
2023-24STL8214721-33002111412.312:31
2024-25STL8041418-125001904.412:30
2025-26STL654711-1128010685.911:59
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—324343771-181100424018.512:09

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.

Last Season

4 goals and 7 assists in 65 games — 11 points, minus-11, at 11:59 a night with 28 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

Thin. 86 unblocked attempts, 4 goals, median 26 feet with 43 per cent from inside 20 — reasonable ice, no finish.

71 points in 324 career games. 7 assists in 65 games is close to the bottom of this edition.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 225, and it is the entire proposition — he forechecks with real weight, is difficult to move off a wall, and kills penalties.

28 penalty minutes in 12 minutes a night is a moderate rate for a man his size, and it points at the criticism: he occupies space rather than imposing on it.

The Intangibles

41.8 per cent of the expected goals, 5th percentile, and 42.1 per cent of the shot attempts, 3rd percentile, across 668 minutes, with the chances 18.3 for and 25.5 against.

Only Oskar Sundqvist is lower on either count, and 668 minutes is a large enough sample to mean it.

3 points in his last 10. He is 27, a fourth-round pick, and a fourth-line winger whose ice time has been falling for 2 seasons. On a roster where the young forwards are pushing hard, this is the page most likely to disappear next year.

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

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.

  • hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best

    29% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 4th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 668 minutes

Expected goals
41.8%
5th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
41.4%
2nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 15 for, 30 against. Expected: 18.3 and 25.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
19th
Numbers
5th

The two rank him within 14 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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, 2025-26 · 65 games

Top speed
23.5 mph
95th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
2.65 a game

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

Distance
1.90 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
88.6 mph
74th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

3

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 2 assists, 18 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 668 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, 2025-26

The club
STL took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.8% — 8.4 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 668 minutes at five-on-five — 28th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nathan Walker41.1%42.4%53.1%
Oskar Sundqvist41.6%42.0%41.7%
Cam Fowler36.7%44.9%51.1%

41.1% together, 42.4% for him apart and 53.1% for Walker apart. Walker 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

86 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.