Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

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.
← 2024-25 edition

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

27

Barrett Hayton

Utah Hockey Club Center

The highest chance share on the roster, and 33 games to show it in.

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
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—209354984-251027063639.616:01

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

33 games, 3 goals and 7 assists for 10 points, 1 on the power play, 26 penalty minutes, 17:01 a night and minus-13. He took 55.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 418 minutes — the 89th percentile and the highest chance share of anybody on this roster — and his ice went 13-24 against an expectation of 19.86-16.03.

Seven goals of finishing below what the chances were worth and eight more conceded than they called for. Thirteen goals for against 19.86 expected is a shortfall of nearly seven goals in a third of a season.

The Finesse Game

93 attempts at a median of 18 feet with 57 per cent of them from inside twenty and 9 per cent from beyond forty, 66 of those on goal, converted at 4.5 per cent against a career 9.64 across 363 shots.

Thirty-five career goals and 49 assists in 209 games. Fifty-seven per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet, which is where a fifth-overall centre is supposed to work; three goals on 66 shots on goal is a rate that has no explanation other than the sample.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 200 and took 26 penalty minutes in 33 games.

102 career penalty minutes in 209 games. He goes to the paint and stays there and takes what comes with it, and 26 minutes in a third of a season is a higher rate than he has posted before.

The Intangibles

Fifth overall in 2018 by Arizona, five seasons, one organisation, and 84 points in 209 games.

A career minus-25 in 209 games. He is 24, he scored 19 goals and 43 points in all 82 games two seasons ago, and last season he played 33.

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
  • a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

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.

  • slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored

    66.7% of his attempts in the slot, 93rd percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it

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

    55.3% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.1% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.2, 95th percentile among forwards

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

  • net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips

    “Fifty-seven per cent of his attempts came from inside twenty feet, which is where a fifth-overall centre is supposed to work; three goals on 66 shots on goal is a rate that has no explanation other than the sample.”

  • hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “He goes to the paint and stays there and takes what comes with it, and 26 minutes in a third of a season is a higher rate than he has posted before.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 418 minutes

Expected goals
55.3%
89th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
54.1%
86th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 13 for, 24 against. Expected: 19.9 and 16.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
80th
Numbers
89th

The two rank him within 9 points of one another. 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.

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 — 76 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 · 33 games

Top speed
22.2 mph
53rd pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.15 a game

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

Distance
2.62 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
77.7 mph
15th 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 ARI · 418 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
ARI took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.3% — 6.4 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 418 minutes at five-on-five — 13th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nick Schmaltz57.2%48.2%46.2%
Clayton Keller56.2%53.9%47.6%
Sean Durzi56.3%54.7%50.7%

57.2% together, 48.2% for him apart and 46.2% for Schmaltz 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

93 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 58% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.