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.
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37

Arturs Silovs

Pittsburgh Penguins Goaltender

An .8613 in ten NHL games, and a playoff run two years ago that is still the reason anybody is interested.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2022-23VAN5320142.750152.908
2023-24VAN4301102.47084.881
2024-25VAN10261333.650238.861
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—19882573.130474.880

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

2-6-1 in 10 games for Vancouver with an .8613 and a 3.65 average, facing 238 shots.

It is a bad ten games and it is ten games. The season that matters on his file is 2023-24, when he was the third-string goaltender in Vancouver and ended up starting a second-round series against Edmonton at 23.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 208 and he plays deep and large, which is the modern default for a goaltender this size — he sets in the crease and lets the frame take the top of the net away.

The lateral recovery is better than the size suggests and it is the best technical thing about him. The rebound control is inconsistent and it is the reason the save percentages read the way they do. He handles the puck adequately and does not start breakouts.

The Mental Game

He was thrown into a playoff series with almost no NHL experience and did not come apart, which is the single most useful piece of evidence anybody has about him.

Everything since has been ordinary. A 24-year-old with 19 NHL games and a .8797 is a prospect and not a plan, and he is being handed a job on a club that has just conceded 293 goals.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick of Vancouver in 2019 out of Latvia, and 19 NHL games in.

He was acquired in the summer for a draft pick. He is 24, he has been outstanding at the American League level, and Pittsburgh is a place where a goaltender will get every opportunity to find out what he is.

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.

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

    “**6-4 and 208 and he plays deep and large**, which is the modern default for a goaltender this size — he sets in the crease and lets the frame take the top of the net away.”

  • lateral-recoverya strength· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “The lateral recovery is better than the size suggests and it is the best technical thing about him.”

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

    “**The rebound control is inconsistent** and it is the reason the save percentages read the way they do.”

  • puck-handlingpresent and ordinary· starts the breakout himself

    “He handles the puck adequately and does not start breakouts.”