Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

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.

Ben Jones

Photo by Jenn G from Seattle, WA, CC BY-SA 2.0

Ben Jones

Calgary Flames Center #64

3 points in 28 games, and the 1st percentile in shot attempts.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22VGK20000200010.08:03
2024-25MIN26000-310000240.08:23
2025-26MIN28123-100000263.98:50
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—56123-1312000512.08:36

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

1 goal and 2 assists in 28 games, minus-10, at 8:50 a night. 0 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Minnesota.

The Finesse Game

36 unblocked attempts and 1 goal. 3 points in 28 games; 3 points in 56 career games.

There is no offensive game to describe at this level and it would be dishonest to invent one from an American League scoring record.

The Physical Game

6 foot even, 187, and 0 penalty minutes in 28 games. He is not initiating anything, not finishing checks, and not winning pucks by force.

The skating is adequate. It is what gets him the fourth-line shifts he gets.

The Intangibles

The numbers are the worst in this edition. 40.5 per cent of the expected goals, 2nd percentile, and 39 per cent of the shot attempts, 1st percentile in the league across 234 minutes.

That sample is small enough that it should not be read as a verdict on a career, and large enough to be a fair description of the season. When he was on the ice the puck went the other way, more or less always.

He is 27, a seventh-round pick, and this is a thirteenth-forward job he is unlikely to hold.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 234 minutes

Expected goals
40.5%
3rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
39.2%
1st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 4 for, 13 against. Expected: 7.6 and 11.1.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
0th
Numbers
3rd

The two rank him within 3 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 — 55 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 · 28 games

Top speed
21.8 mph
32nd pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.89 a game

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

Distance
1.37 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
80.7 mph
23rd 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 17 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

3

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 2 assists, 18 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with MIN · 234 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
MIN took 50.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 40.5% — 10.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
234 minutes at five-on-five — 1st percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Tyler Pitlick42.8%38.1%44.6%
Brock Faber32.3%45.2%53.2%
Yakov Trenin36.7%42.2%49.8%

42.8% together, 38.1% for him apart and 44.6% for Pitlick apart. He was worse away from Pitlick, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Pitlick did.

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

36 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 31% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.