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.

Brandon Carlo

Photo by Puffycoombes, CC BY-SA 4.0

Brandon Carlo

St. Louis Blues Defense #25

692 games, and no goals at all last season.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17BOS8261016+959010886.820:49
2017-18BOS76066+1045000760.019:14
2018-19BOS722810+22470001161.720:55
2019-20BOS6741519+16330001113.620:29
2020-21BOS27314+112001437.018:43
2021-22BOS796915+2310101254.819:42
2022-23BOS7531316+4438000943.218:50
2023-24BOS7641014+2342001795.119:54
2024-25BOS/TOR8311112+637000771.318:54
2025-26TOR55077+437000660.019:22
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—6922990119+1373810228753.319:45

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

No goals and 7 assists in 55 games — 7 points, plus-4, at 19:22 a night with 37 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Toronto. His 692nd career game.

The Finesse Game

None whatsoever. 91 unblocked attempts from a median of 51 feet, 76 per cent from beyond 40, 4 per cent from inside 20, and not one went in.

29 goals in 692 career games, and 119 points. 7 assists in 55 games is near the bottom of this edition.

There has never been an offensive component and no club has ever asked for one.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 227, and this is a genuinely excellent defensive defenceman — the gap control is among the best in the league, he kills plays at the blue line before they start, and he owns his crease.

37 penalty minutes is disciplined for the way he defends.

The Intangibles

45.0 per cent of the expected goals, 14th percentile, and 43.4 per cent of the shot attempts, 5th percentile, across 897 minutes in Toronto — with the chances 35.5 to 43.3 against.

Those are poor numbers, and they came in the hardest available minutes on a club whose goaltending finished 21 goals worse than its chances. The goals went 39-45 regardless, which is almost exactly what the chances underneath them predicted.

He is 29, and joins Parayko to give St. Louis 2 right-shot defencemen of 6-5 and 6-6. In a 7-game series that is a specific and valuable thing to have.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 897 minutes

Expected goals
45%
15th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43.4%
5th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 45 against. Expected: 35.5 and 43.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
33rd
Numbers
15th

The two rank him within 18 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 — 69 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 · 55 games

Top speed
21.7 mph
53rd pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.27 a game

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

Distance
2.57 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
93.4 mph
70th 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

1

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 1 assists, 13 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with TOR · 897 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
TOR took 46.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.0% — 1.3 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 897 minutes at five-on-five — 48th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Morgan Rielly47.0%42.8%49.1%
John Tavares50.2%42.8%48.1%
Matthew Knies42.9%45.9%44.9%

47.0% together, 42.8% for him apart and 49.1% for Rielly apart. He was worse away from Rielly, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Rielly 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

91 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 0 of them goals. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.