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.

34

Arthur Kaliyev

New York Rangers Right Wing

The 98th percentile of chances in Los Angeles, and fifteen points to show for it.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21LAK1101-100001100.014:42
2021-22LAK80141327-3376021947.212:39
2022-23LAK56131528-51280112210.711:41
2023-24LAK517815-3143001016.911:48
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—188353671-126317034188.412:09

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

51 games in Los Angeles, 7 goals and 8 assists for 15 points, 3 on the power play, 14 penalty minutes, 11:48 a night and minus-3. He took 59.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 536 minutes, the 98th percentile, and his ice went 21-23 against an expectation of 28.64-19.24, all of it with the Kings.

Eight goals of scoring that did not arrive and four more conceded than the chances called for. A 98th-percentile chance share that produced fifteen points is the widest gap between play and result anywhere in this chapter.

The Finesse Game

101 shots at a median of 33 feet with 31 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 6.9 per cent against a career 8.37.

36 career assists in 188 games. The shot is the reason he was drafted and it is a genuine professional weapon — 17 career power-play goals in 188 games says so. Seven goals on a hundred and one shots at even strength is not the shot; it is where he takes them from.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 212 and does not use any of it.

63 career penalty minutes in 188 games is a low rate. He does not forecheck, does not win the wall, and the skating is the reason he has never held a top-six job.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2019 out of Tashkent, four seasons across two organisations, and 71 points in 188 games.

He is 23 and has a legitimate power-play shot and nothing else. On a club whose power play was ninth with Kreider and Zibanejad already on it, there is not an obvious place for him.

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
  • 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.

  • perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in

    31.2% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 93rd percentile among forwards

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

  • drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there

    59.8% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 53.2% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.6, 93rd percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He is 6-2 and 212 and does not use any of it.”

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

    “He does not forecheck, does not win the wall, and the skating is the reason he has never held a top-six job.”

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

    “He does not forecheck, does not win the wall, and the skating is the reason he has never held a top-six job.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 536 minutes

Expected goals
59.8%
98th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
57.7%
96th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 21 for, 23 against. Expected: 28.6 and 19.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
15th
Numbers
98th

The numbers rank him 83 points above where the report does. 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. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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 — 60 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 · 51 games

Top speed
21.8 mph
31st pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.82 a game

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

Distance
1.94 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
95.4 mph
92nd 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 with LAK · 536 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
LAK took 54.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 59.8% — 5.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 536 minutes at five-on-five — 20th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Pierre-Luc Dubois62.8%58.0%50.9%
Andreas Englund57.1%61.2%50.3%
Matt Roy64.9%57.3%53.8%

62.8% together, 58.0% for him apart and 50.9% for Dubois apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

154 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 29% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 31% from beyond forty.