Armchair Hockey Scout

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2023-24 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 2023-24 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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79

Charlie Lindgren

Washington Capitals Goaltender

Undrafted, right-handed, and sixty NHL games spread across seven seasons.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2015-16MTL110022.00028.929
2016-17MTL220031.48059.949
2017-18MTL14482423.032457.908
2018-19MTL110054.62049.898
2019-20MTL6240203.330178.888
2021-22STL550051.220118.958
2022-23WSH3113113863.050853.899
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—60282351632.8921742.906

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

13-11-3 in 31 games, .8992, 3.05, no shutouts on 853 shots.

Eight hundred and fifty-three shots is below this book’s thousand-shot threshold, so he is not placed in the pool of 35 — but the pool stopped .9067 between them, and on 853 shots the distance from that rate to his is about six goals.

Thirty-one games, which is more than he had played in his six previous seasons put together.

Seven seasons, 60 games, a career .9064 on 1,742 shots.

Washington’s goaltending was worth minus-5.7 goals against the chances it faced, twentieth in the league, across the two men.

The Finesse Game

6-2 and 190 pounds, and he catches with his right hand — one of only four goaltenders in this book who does.

At 190 pounds he cannot cover the net by filling it, so the game is quickness and angle: he plays high in his crease and cuts the shot down before it is taken.

The cost is the one every goaltender of that description pays. The first shot is taken away and the cross-ice pass leaves him travelling, and the rebound control is the weakest part of the file — pucks come off him and the second chance is the one that goes in.

The seasons read .9286 on 28 shots, .9492 on 59, .9081 on 457, .8980 on 49, .8876 on 178, .9576 on 118 and .8992 on 853. Six of those seven are samples too small to mean anything, and the seventh is the one below the league rate.

A career .9064 across 1,742 shots is the honest summary and it is a backup’s number.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, seven seasons, 60 games across Montreal, St. Louis and Washington.

28 wins, two shutouts, and a career .9064.

He is twenty-nine, and he has played sixty NHL games in seven years — thirty-one of them last season.

An undrafted goaltender who reaches thirty NHL games in a season at twenty-nine, seven years after his first one, has already done something almost nobody does. What the record cannot say is whether the .8992 or the career .9064 is nearer the truth, because there is not enough of either to tell.

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.

  • plays-aggressivea strength· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “At 190 pounds he cannot cover the net by filling it, so the game is quickness and angle: he plays high in his crease and cuts the shot down before it is taken.”

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

    “The first shot is taken away and the cross-ice pass leaves him travelling, and the rebound control is the weakest part of the file — pucks come off him and the second chance is the one that goes in.”

  • undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached

    “An undrafted goaltender who reaches thirty NHL games in a season at twenty-nine, seven years after his first one, has already done something almost nobody does.”