Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

64

Ben Jones

Minnesota Wild Center

26 games, 0 points, and 24 shots without a goal.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22VGK20000200010.08:03
2024-25MIN26000-310000240.08:23
2025-26 so far
Career28000-312000250.08:22

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

0 goals and 0 assists in 26 games, minus-3, on 8:23 a night — 24 shots and nothing.

42.1 per cent at five-on-five, the 6th percentile, over 213 minutes. A pointless NHL season is a rare thing at 26 games and it is what happened.

The Finesse Game

None at this level. 24 shots and no goals, no assists, and no evidence in seven professional seasons of an NHL offensive game.

He plays simply and does not turn the puck over. That is the whole of it.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 187, and honest without being heavy. He forechecks and wins some pucks and is not a physical presence.

10 penalty minutes over 26 games.

The Intangibles

A seventh-round pick, six American League seasons, and 26 NHL games at 26 built on persistence.

The projection is an American League centre who is recalled when somebody is hurt. That is a real career and this is the level it reaches.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 213 minutes

Expected goals
42.1%
6th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
39.6%
0th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 10 for, 13 against. Expected: 6.7 and 9.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
12th
Numbers
6th

The two rank him within 6 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 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 64 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 213 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, 2024-25

The club
MIN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 42.1% — 7.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
213 minutes at five-on-five — 1st percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Devin Shore43.0%40.2%42.4%
Marat Khusnutdinov48.3%34.1%40.7%
Zach Bogosian39.9%43.6%48.9%

43.0% together, 40.2% for him apart and 42.4% for Shore apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

39 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 0 of them goals. 23% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 46% from beyond forty.