Armchair Hockey Scout

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2024-25 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 2024-25 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

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17

Brett Leason

Anaheim Ducks Right Wing

Six foot five, eleven goals, two of them shorthanded — and fourteen penalty minutes all year.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22WSH36336+14000456.78:57
2022-23ANA54639-21140015111.810:54
2023-24ANA68111122-7140209112.113:01
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—158201737-273202118710.711:22

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

11 goals and 11 assists in 68 games — 22 points at 13:01 a night, minus-7, with 2 shorthanded goals on 91 shots, converting at 12.09 per cent, and 14 penalty minutes.

42.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 728 minutes, the 10th percentile. His ice went 20-29 against an expectation of 21.28-28.30 — three fewer conceded than the chances predicted.

The Finesse Game

91 attempts at a median of 31 feet, with 27 per cent from inside 20 and 35 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 12.09 per cent. Eleven goals in a fourth-line role is a useful return.

11 assists. He is not a distributor and the puck does not stay on his stick long, and the offence comes from arriving at the right place rather than from creating it.

The two shorthanded goals are the most interesting thing here — a 6-5 forward closing on a puck carrier is a genuine problem for a power play, and he is trusted a man short.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 220, and he does not play as heavy as the frame. He uses the reach to take pucks rather than the body to take men, and he is not the deterrent his size suggests.

14 penalty minutes in 68 games and 32 in 158 career games is one of the lowest rates on the club. On a roster spending 6:08 a game shorthanded, a big forward who never fouls is worth something.

The Intangibles

Fifty-sixth overall in 2019 by Washington, after two draft years passed over entirely, and 158 NHL games at 25.

He is a fourth-line winger who kills penalties and does not take them, which on this club is a specific and needed job. Twenty passed-over draft years and 6-5 is a profile that arrives late or not at all, and this one arrived.

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
  • a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
  • he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

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.

  • perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in

    34.8% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 98th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

  • penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short

    “**The two shorthanded goals are the most interesting thing here** — a 6-5 forward closing on a puck carrier is a genuine problem for a power play, and he is trusted a man short.”

  • defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens

    “He uses the reach to take pucks rather than the body to take men, and he is not the deterrent his size suggests.”

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “**6-5 and 220, and he does not play as heavy as the frame.** He uses the reach to take pucks rather than the body to take men, and he is not the deterrent his size suggests.”

  • playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “**He is not a distributor and the puck does not stay on his stick long**, and the offence comes from arriving at the right place rather than from creating it.”

  • fouls-when-beatenhe lacks it· the stick foul that follows losing a step

    “**14 penalty minutes in 68 games and 32 in 158 career games** is one of the lowest rates on the club.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 728 minutes

Expected goals
42.9%
10th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43.6%
11th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 20 for, 29 against. Expected: 21.3 and 28.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
11th
Numbers
10th

The two rank him within 1 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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, 2023-24 · 68 games

Top speed
22.3 mph
55th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
1.75 a game

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

Distance
2.08 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
90.3 mph
73rd pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 728 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, 2023-24

The club
ANA took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 42.9% — 3.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 728 minutes at five-on-five — 34th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Cam Fowler45.7%41.6%44.4%
Jackson LaCombe42.2%43.3%45.9%
Radko Gudas44.7%42.1%49.1%

45.7% together, 41.6% for him apart and 44.4% for Fowler apart. He was worse away from Fowler, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Fowler 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

115 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 27 feet. 27% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 35% from beyond forty.