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 Tanev

Photo by Pens Through My Lens, CC BY-SA 4.0

Brandon Tanev

Utah Mammoth Left Wing #13

608 games, undrafted, and no goals at all.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16WPG30000200040.012:03
2016-17WPG51224-626001543.710:41
2017-18WPG6181018+13180317910.112:40
2018-19WPG80141529+94102012711.014:07
2019-20PIT68111425-1160249511.614:45
2020-21PIT327916+12220104316.314:26
2021-22SEA309615+4132135117.614:34
2022-23SEA82161935+214401311513.914:13
2023-24SEA667916+251000739.614:35
2024-25SEA/WPG79101222-12160009910.113:13
2025-26UTA56033-1550000420.09:22
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—6088499183+272992101278210.713:18

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 3 assists in 56 games — 3 points, minus-15, at 9:22 a night with 50 penalty minutes.

His 608th career game.

The Finesse Game

63 unblocked attempts with 54 per cent from inside 20 feet and a median of 19 — genuinely good ice — and not one of them went in.

That is the strangest line on this page: a forechecking winger who found the slot 63 times and scored nothing.

183 points in 608 career games. 3 assists in 56 games is close to the lowest offensive return in this edition.

The Physical Game

6 foot even, 189, and he plays one of the most relentlessly physical games in the league at that weight — he forechecks at full speed every shift, finishes every check, and has the injury record to show for it.

50 penalty minutes in 9 minutes a night is a very high rate.

The Intangibles

43.9 per cent of the expected goals, 10th percentile, and 47.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 32nd, across 509 minutes.

The goals went 8-23 against him, and he scored none of them either.

1 point in his last 10. He is 34, undrafted out of Providence, and one of the fastest skaters in the league for a decade. A season with no goals at 34 is usually the last chapter.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 509 minutes

Expected goals
43.9%
10th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.7%
33rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 8 for, 23 against. Expected: 16.5 and 21.1.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
44th
Numbers
10th

The report ranks him 34 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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 — 71 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 · 56 games

Top speed
23.0 mph
84th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.75 a game

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

Distance
1.56 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
86.7 mph
61st 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 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

1

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 1 assists, 14 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 509 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
UTA took 53.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.9% — 9.2 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 509 minutes at five-on-five — 17th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Liam O'Brien46.4%42.1%43.1%
Ian Cole45.9%42.6%54.0%
John Marino48.3%41.6%55.6%

46.4% together, 42.1% for him apart and 43.1% for O'Brien 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

63 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 0 of them goals. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.