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.
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82

Cole Guttman

Los Angeles Kings Center

A small, quick forward on his third organisation, with 41 NHL games to make an argument with.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23CHI14426+120012615.414:34
2023-24CHI27448-177200508.012:37
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—418614-1692017610.513:17

No games in 2025-26. The season above is the last one he played, and everything on this page should be read with that gap in it.

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.

2023-24

4 goals and 8 points in 27 games on 12 and a half minutes a night, 2 of the goals on the power play. The minus-17 in that few games is the number that jumps out and it is a genuinely poor one. He has not played an NHL game in the 2 seasons since.

The Finesse Game

50 shots in 27 games is an aggressive rate for a bottom-6 forward, and it fits the scouting on him: he is a shooter with quick hands who has always produced in the minors. There is enough skill here to be a useful depth scorer if a lineup spot ever holds.

At 5-9 and 167 pounds he plays on the perimeter more than he would like, and the offence he generates comes from finding soft ice rather than from taking pucks off anyone.

The Physical Game

Very light, and it shows in his own end. He is not going to win a battle along the wall, and the defensive numbers across his brief NHL sample are bad enough that a coach has to think about where to use him.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick who has scored at every level below this one and has not yet been given, or earned, a run of games here.

At 27 the window for that to change is closing. He is a thirteenth forward with a shot, and the sample is too small to say much more honestly.