Armchair Hockey Scout

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2022-23 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 2022-23 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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55

Cayden Primeau

Montreal Canadiens Goaltender

Eighteen NHL games at .8737 across three seasons, from the 199th pick of 2017.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2019-20MTL211052.52072.931
2020-21MTL4121144.16093.850
2021-22MTL12171404.620302.868
2022-23 so far——————————
Career—183102594.210467.874

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

12 games, 1-7-1, a .8675 save percentage and a 4.62 goals-against, no shutouts on 302 shots. He falls well short of the twenty-five-game line the goaltender table uses.

One hundred and ninety-ninth overall in 2017, and 18 NHL games at 23.

The Physical Game

Three partial seasons: .9306 across a handful, then .8495, then .8675. Career .8737 on 467 shots.

Four hundred and sixty-seven shots is far too small a sample to separate a goaltender from noise, and both the good number and the bad ones are meaningless on their own. What is not meaningless is that the last two seasons agree with each other and disagree with the first.

The Mental Game

A 4.62 goals-against is the worst figure attached to any goaltender in this chapter, on a club that allowed the most goals in the league. Twelve games at 23 behind a last-place defence is close to the hardest possible introduction, and the record should be read that way.

The club’s own model rated Montreal 23rd in goaltending at minus-13, which spreads across five men — Carey Price played five games and has gone off the roster, Andrew Hammond four, Michael McNiven one. Six goaltenders dressed for one club in a season.

The Intangibles

He is 23 with eighteen NHL games and a seventh-round pedigree, on a club with no settled starter.

Nothing here is evidence in either direction and this report will not pretend otherwise. The one fact worth carrying forward is the shape of the depth chart: Montreal’s crease last season was a 32-year-old at .9047, a 26-year-old at .8915, and this.