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.

Braden Schneider

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

Braden Schneider

New York Rangers Defense #4

1,400 minutes at the 10th percentile, and 2 goals.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22NYR432911+59000258.015:29
2022-23NYR8151318+916001796.315:43
2023-24NYR8251419-116011955.315:54
2024-25NYR8061521+918011956.317:52
2025-26NYR8221618-5260001022.020:27
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—368206787+17850233965.117:15

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

2 goals and 16 assists in all 82 games — 18 points, minus-5, at 20:27 a night with 1,437 5-on-5 minutes.

The Finesse Game

Almost none. 157 unblocked attempts from a median of 53 feet, 4 per cent from inside 20, 2 goals. 87 points in 368 career games.

16 assists in a full season of 20-minute nights is a low number and there is no sign of more coming.

The Physical Game

6-3, 206, and this is the case for him. He hits hard, closes gaps aggressively, and is genuinely difficult to get past in a straight line. 26 penalty minutes is disciplined for that style.

The Intangibles

44.0 per cent of the expected goals, 11th percentile, and 45.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 18th, with the chances 47.2 to 60.1 against across 1,400 minutes.

That is a 12-goal deficit in chances alone, in the second-most minutes on the club.

New York finished 11th in even-strength expected goals against, which is a good number, and it was produced by Fox at the 91st percentile and Gavrikov at the 52nd carrying 2 defencemen in the bottom sixth.

He is 24, a 19th overall pick, and 368 games in. No goals in his last 10. The physical game is real and the results have never once agreed with it.

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

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.

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,437 minutes

Expected goals
44%
11th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
45.9%
18th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 63 against. Expected: 47.2 and 60.1.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
15th
Numbers
11th

The two rank him within 4 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 — 65 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 · 82 games

Top speed
22.2 mph
71st pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6

Bursts over 20 mph
0.57 a game

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

Distance
2.77 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
92.3 mph
61st pct

one shot; the league's average best is 88.9

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

3

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 3 assists, 15 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1437 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
NYR took 48.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.0% — 4.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 1,437 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Vladislav Gavrikov41.8%45.2%53.2%
Mika Zibanejad46.9%42.8%51.9%
Alexis Lafrenière50.8%41.1%54.7%

41.8% together, 45.2% for him apart and 53.2% for Gavrikov apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

157 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 37 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 79% from beyond forty.