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.

Charlie Coyle

Photo by Resolute, CC BY-SA 3.0

Charlie Coyle

Columbus Blue Jackets Center #3

24 goals at 34, from a median of 16 feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2012-13MIN378614+3281025016.015:04
2013-14MIN70121830-7332021358.917:05
2014-15MIN82112435+13391041209.214:33
2015-16MIN82212142+11620414015.017:18
2016-17MIN82183856+133640515911.316:42
2017-18MIN66112637+8180111179.416:32
2018-19MIN/BOS81122234-1201121557.716:46
2019-20BOS70162137+92112314511.016:47
2020-21BOS5161016-420012797.616:17
2021-22BOS82162844-63230513112.217:24
2022-23BOS82162945+293001013911.516:59
2023-24BOS82253560-23871514717.018:04
2024-25BOS/COL83171835-92431311514.816:59
2025-26CBJ82203858+31470314413.918:06
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—1032209334543+5036932841177611.816:51

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

20 goals and 38 assists in all 82 games — 58 points, plus-3, at 18:06 a night with 7 power-play goals. His 1,032nd career game.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is the reason this is a career year at 34. 62 per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside 20 feet, median 16, with only 7 per cent from beyond 40 — and 24 goals came out of it.

He has no speed left and has replaced it entirely with position. He arrives at the net, he is 6-3 and 221 pounds, and he puts back what comes loose.

38 assists is a career high and comes from the same place: he holds pucks in the corners until somebody is open.

The Physical Game

6-3, 221, and he plays the heavy game without the penalties — 14 penalty minutes in a full season. He wins faceoffs and he is very hard to take the puck from.

The Intangibles

51.8 per cent of the expected goals, 69th percentile, in 1,078 minutes.

9 points in his last 10, 6 of them goals. He is 34, a 14-year veteran, and having the best offensive season of his life on a club that needed a centre.

The lesson on this page is the same one Zucker’s and Staal’s carry: a forward who loses a step and starts shooting from 16 feet instead of 30 scores more, not less.

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

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.

  • slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored

    72.9% of his attempts in the slot, 98th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it

  • disciplined· stays out of the box

    0.17 penalty minutes a game over 82, 9th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,078 minutes

Expected goals
51.8%
69th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
50.6%
65th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 52 for, 37 against. Expected: 45.7 and 42.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
67th
Numbers
69th

The two rank him within 2 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 — 75 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 · 82 games

Top speed
23.1 mph
87th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
1.06 a game

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

Distance
2.78 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
89.8 mph
83rd pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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

9

points in his last 10 games — 6 goals, 3 assists, 29 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1078 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
CBJ took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.8% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,078 minutes at five-on-five — 69th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Mathieu Olivier53.2%49.8%56.1%
Cole Sillinger54.3%48.5%49.5%
Zach Werenski57.5%47.4%54.0%

53.2% together, 49.8% for him apart and 56.1% for Olivier apart. He was worse away from Olivier, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Olivier 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

207 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 24 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 62% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.