Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2025-26 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 2025-26 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

55

Cayden Primeau

Toronto Maple Leafs Goaltender

An .836 in eleven games, which is the worst save percentage of anybody in this edition.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2019-20MTL211052.52072.931
2020-21MTL4121144.16093.850
2021-22MTL12171404.620302.868
2022-23MTL302083.46054.852
2023-24MTL23894662.992731.910
2024-25MTL11231414.700250.836
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—55132471743.6921502.884

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

2-3-1 in 11 games for Montreal with an .836 and a 4.70 average, facing 250 shots.

An .836 is the worst save percentage of any goaltender in this edition. It came in a season in which Montreal made the playoffs, which means the club won in spite of every appearance he made. He was waived and sent to the American League.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 205 and the technique is conventional and slow. He plays a moderate depth and he is square, and there is nothing obviously broken about the shape of it.

The rebound control is poor and the lateral recovery is not quick enough to cover it, which is the combination that produces a save percentage like the one above. He handles the puck adequately and does not start breakouts.

The Mental Game

He has a career .8842 across 55 NHL games and six seasons, and he has been outstanding at the American League level for most of that time — an AHL goaltender of the year in one of them.

The gap between the two is the whole file and nobody has explained it. At 26 the window in which a club will keep finding out is closing.

The Intangibles

199th overall in 2017, the son of a long-serving NHL forward, and 55 NHL games with a career .8842.

He is 26 and Toronto acquired him from Montreal in the summer for a seventh-round pick, to be the third goaltender behind two men who have never played a full season.

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.

  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
  • 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.

  • plays-deeppresent and ordinary· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He plays a moderate depth and he is square, and there is nothing obviously broken about the shape of it.”

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “**The rebound control is poor** and the lateral recovery is not quick enough to cover it, which is the combination that produces a save percentage like the one above.”

  • lateral-recoveryhe lacks it· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “**The rebound control is poor** and the lateral recovery is not quick enough to cover it, which is the combination that produces a save percentage like the one above.”

  • puck-handlingpresent and ordinary· starts the breakout himself

    “He handles the puck adequately and does not start breakouts.”