Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2023-24 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 2023-24 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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41

Anthony Stolarz

Florida Panthers Goaltender

The heaviest goaltender in this book at 248 pounds, and an .8968 behind the worst defensive club in the league.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2016-17PHI7211132.071181.928
2018-19PHI/EDM18453503.451503.901
2019-20ANA101022.04036.944
2020-21ANA8430172.201230.926
2021-22ANA281283672.673809.917
2022-23ANA19560513.730494.897
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—81272472002.9362253.911

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

5-6-0 in 19 games, .8968, 3.73, no shutouts on 494 shots — with Anaheim.

A 3.73 goals-against average is a terrible-looking number and it needs its club attached. Anaheim finished last in the league in expected goals against per sixty at even strength, last in chances, last on the penalty kill, and conceded 338 goals, the most in the league. The other man in that crease faced 1,983 shots in 53 games and posted .8991. Both Anaheim goaltenders finished under .900 — and the club’s goaltending value still ranked eighteenth, which is the model saying these were roughly the saves the chances deserved.

His previous season was .9172 in twenty-eight games behind the same organisation, so the year before does not support the year after.

Six seasons, 81 games in total. He has never been a first-choice goaltender anywhere.

The Finesse Game

6-6 and 248 — the heaviest goaltender in this book, and seventeen pounds more than the next.

He fills the net by standing in it and plays a deep, blocking style that depends on the puck finding him rather than on him finding the puck. Against clean looks that works. Against lateral plays the recovery is slow, and 494 shots in nineteen games in Anaheim produced a great many lateral plays.

One shutout in six seasons, and 81 games across eleven years is a small enough body of work that no career figure drawn from it carries much information.

The Intangibles

Forty-fifth overall in 2012 to Philadelphia, and eleven years to eighty-one NHL games.

Florida signed him to back up Bobrovsky after losing both of the goaltenders who actually produced the club’s positive goaltending value last season. That is a real gap and this is a modest way to fill it.

The honest projection is a backup who gives a club twenty-five games somewhere between .900 and .915, which is what he has done twice.

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.

  • plays-deepa strength· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He fills the net by standing in it and plays a deep, blocking style that depends on the puck finding him rather than on him finding the puck.”

  • lateral-recoveryhe lacks it· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “Against lateral plays the recovery is slow, and 494 shots in nineteen games in Anaheim produced a great many lateral plays.”