Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

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.
← 2026-27 edition
Charle-Edouard D'Astous

Photo by Atrox1912, CC BY-SA 4.0

Charle-Edouard D'Astous

Tampa Bay Lightning Defense #51

Undrafted, 28 years old, and 112 penalty minutes in his rookie season.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2025-26TBL7062329-4112002807.518:45
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—7062329-4112002807.518:45

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

6 goals and 23 assists in 70 games — 29 points, minus-4, at 18:45 a night with 112 penalty minutes.

His first NHL season, at 28.

The Finesse Game

124 unblocked attempts from a median of 44 feet, 6 goals. 23 assists in 70 games is a genuinely good return for a rookie defenceman and it is the shot from the point that produces most of them.

The Physical Game

6-2, 211, and the penalty minutes tell it — 112 in 70 games is among the 6 highest totals in the league, level with Adam Klapka, and it comes from a man who spent 8 years being told he was not an NHL player and arrived determined to be one.

He clears his crease, finishes checks, and fights.

The Intangibles

55.5 per cent of the expected goals, 90th percentile, and 53.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 82nd, across 1,175 minutes — with the chances 51.5 to 41.3 in his favour and the goals 60-55.

That is a top-pair season in every underlying respect, produced by a 28-year-old rookie who was undrafted out of Rimouski and spent his twenties in the minors and in Europe.

7 points in his last 10, 2 of them goals. There is no projection to make here and no development curve to wait on. He is 28, this is what he is, and it is a second-pair defenceman on a Stanley Cup contender.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,175 minutes

Expected goals
55.5%
90th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.3%
83rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 60 for, 55 against. Expected: 51.5 and 41.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
78th
Numbers
90th

The two rank him within 12 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

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 — 77 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 · 70 games

Top speed
22.1 mph
67th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6

Bursts over 20 mph
0.29 a game

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

Distance
2.67 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
96.0 mph
83rd pct

one shot; the league's average best is 88.9

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

7

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 5 assists, 17 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1175 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
TBL took 53.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.5% — 1.6 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,175 minutes at five-on-five — 80th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Emil Lilleberg55.5%55.5%50.1%
Jake Guentzel60.1%53.7%52.1%
Nikita Kucherov57.5%54.6%57.9%

55.5% together, 55.5% for him apart and 50.1% for Lilleberg apart. Lilleberg was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Lilleberg than for him.

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

124 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 36 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 62% from beyond forty.