Cam Talbot

A .9004 in 47 games at 37, and 8.7 goals of goaltending above expectation on a club that finished 26th in finishing.

Season	Team	GP	W	L	OTL	GA	GAA	SO	SA	SV%

2013-14	NYR	21	12	6	1	33	1.64	3	560	.941
2014-15	NYR	36	21	9	4	77	2.21	5	1038	.926
2015-16	EDM	56	21	27	5	137	2.55	3	1648	.917
2016-17	EDM	73	42	22	8	171	2.39	7	2117	.919
2017-18	EDM	67	31	31	3	188	3.02	1	2036	.908
2018-19	EDM/PHI	35	11	17	3	108	3.40	1	997	.892
2019-20	CGY	26	12	10	1	63	2.63	2	780	.919
2020-21	MIN	33	19	8	5	86	2.63	2	1008	.915
2021-22	MIN	49	32	12	4	132	2.76	3	1488	.911
2022-23	OTT	36	17	14	2	95	2.93	1	935	.898
2023-24	LAK	54	27	20	6	130	2.50	3	1490	.913
2024-25	DET	47	21	19	5	129	2.93	2	1295	.900
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	533	266	195	47	1349	2.66	33	15392	.912

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

21-19-5 in 47 games, .9004 with a 2.93 average and 2 shutouts on 1,295 shots.

Detroit’s goaltending came in 8.7 goals better than the chances faced, 11th in the league, against a club that finished 26th in finishing at 14.4 goals below expectation. The crease was not the problem last season and it was the only phase that was not.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 202, and the game is positional and economical rather than athletic. He is square, he does not travel further than the puck requires, and he tracks well through traffic.

The recovery is where age shows. Beaten laterally he no longer gets to the second puck, and a scramble is more dangerous against him than it was five years ago. Behind a club that concedes as many second chances as this one, that is the recurring flaw.

The Mental Game

Thirteen seasons, six organisations, and a temperament that has never wavered — he has been a starter, a backup, a playoff hero and a waiver casualty, and the record shows no stretch where any of it visibly affected him.

He takes a bad goal without it becoming a bad period, which for a 37-year-old playing 47 games behind a mediocre team is most of the value.

The Intangibles

At 37, on a modest contract, having given a rebuilding club a genuinely above-average season.

The reservation is arithmetic. He turns 38 in July, he played 47 games, and the club has now traded for a 32-year-old to share the job. There is no long-term answer here and the organisation appears to know 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.

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.

tracks-traffica strength· finds it through a screen
“He is square, he does not travel further than the puck requires, and he tracks well through traffic.”
lateral-recoveryhe lacks it· post-to-post, and across the slot
“The recovery is where age shows. Beaten laterally he no longer gets to the second puck, and a scramble is more dangerous against him than it was five years ago.”