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.

CW

Colton White

Columbus Blue Jackets Defense

107 NHL games and not a single goal in any of them.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19NJD3000-2200010.014:14
2019-20NJD6000-2400020.013:59
2020-21NJD2000-1000030.014:16
2021-22NJD27044+28000180.013:15
2022-23ANA46066-178000300.014:32
2025-26NJD23044+22000140.012:15
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—10701414-1824000680.013:40

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

No goals and 4 assists in 23 games, plus-2, at 12:15 a night. His 5-on-5 work was done in New Jersey.

The Finesse Game

No goals in 107 career NHL games. 18 unblocked attempts last season from a median of 54 feet, 14 shots on goal in 23 games.

14 assists across those 107 games. There is no offensive game to describe and the club is not looking for one.

The Physical Game

6-1, 187, and light. 2 penalty minutes in 23 games. He defends positionally and does not initiate contact.

The Intangibles

50.8 per cent of the expected goals, 61st percentile, and 46.6 per cent of the shot attempts, 22nd, in 291 minutes — below the line, in a small sample, in a depth role.

He is 29, a fourth-round pick in 2015, and has spent 9 professional seasons mostly in the American League. Making 107 NHL games from there is an achievement that the numbers on this page will never show.

This is a seventh-defenceman page. There is not enough evidence for anything stronger, in either direction.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 291 minutes

Expected goals
50.8%
62nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
46.6%
23rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 8 for, 8 against. Expected: 9.6 and 9.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
1st
Numbers
62nd
Blind
8th

The numbers rank him 61 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

The same player was graded a second time from his biography and his box score alone, with the measured record withheld. That reading lands 54 points from the numbers; this one lands 61. Across the whole control the two distances come out the same, which is worth knowing in both directions: the arithmetic on both sides of the sighted reading did not buy it any accuracy, and it did not cost it any either.

All three 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 — 58 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 · 23 games

Top speed
20.8 mph
23rd pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.09 a game

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

Distance
1.79 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
81.1 mph
15th 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 12 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

4

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 4 assists, 12 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with NJD · 291 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
NJD took 50.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.8% — 0.4 above the club he did it on.
The role
291 minutes at five-on-five — 5th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Brenden Dillon50.5%51.2%50.3%
Dawson Mercer56.5%48.0%51.8%
Arseny Gritsyuk64.8%45.5%55.3%

50.5% together, 51.2% for him apart and 50.3% for Dillon apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

18 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 0 of them goals. 17% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.