Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.

Barrett Hayton

Photo by CloutsnChara Sports Cards, CC BY 3.0

Barrett Hayton

Utah Mammoth Center #27

The fifth pick in 2018, 25 points, and the 94th percentile.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20ARI20134+214001273.711:09
2020-21ARI14213-100001020.011:29
2021-22ARI60101424-8202018212.216:07
2022-23ARI82192443-54240417810.717:30
2023-24ARI333710-1326100664.517:01
2024-25UTA82202646-64570715512.916:06
2025-26UTA67101525+3544011198.415:07
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—3586590155-282011801463710.215:52

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

10 goals and 15 assists in 67 games — 25 points, plus-3, at 15:07 a night with 4 power-play goals and 54 penalty minutes. 15 games missed.

155 points in 358 career games.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is excellent and the finish is not. 166 unblocked attempts with 55 per cent from inside 20 feet and a median of 16, and only 10 goals.

That is a centre standing in exactly the right place and not converting, which is the least alarming version of a scoring problem and also the most persistent one — 7 seasons in, he has never scored 20.

15 assists in 67 games is modest.

The Physical Game

6-1, 200, and he plays a genuinely hard two-way game. 54 penalty minutes in 15 minutes a night is a high rate.

He wins draws, kills penalties, and goes to the interior. The compete has never been the question.

The Intangibles

56.1 per cent of the expected goals, 92nd percentile, and 54.1 per cent of the shot attempts, 87th, across 854 minutes, with the chances 37.9 to 29.7 in his favour and the goals 33-33.

Those are the second-best chance-share figures on the club and they sit under 25 points.

4 points in his last 10, 3 of them goals. He is 26, the fifth pick in 2018, and the gap between what the underlying numbers say about his season and what the scoresheet says is as wide as any in this edition.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 854 minutes

Expected goals
56.1%
93rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
54.1%
87th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 33 for, 33 against. Expected: 37.9 and 29.7.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
78th
Numbers
93rd

The two rank him within 15 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 — 77 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 · 67 games

Top speed
22.8 mph
76th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
2.18 a game

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

Distance
2.46 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
82.8 mph
36th 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

4

points in his last 10 games — 3 goals, 1 assists, 25 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 854 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
UTA took 53.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.1% — 3.0 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 854 minutes at five-on-five — 43rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Mikhail Sergachev58.2%54.8%49.3%
JJ Peterka55.5%56.4%52.6%
Dylan Guenther54.1%57.0%52.2%

58.2% together, 54.8% for him apart and 49.3% for Sergachev 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

166 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 55% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.