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.

Connor Brown

Photo by Michael Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0

Connor Brown

New Jersey Devils Right Wing #16

18 goals from a median of 21 feet, at 32.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16TOR7156-20100119.114:58
2016-17TOR82201636+31021413914.416:12
2017-18TOR8214142801811211911.815:01
2018-19TOR8282129+1116000859.413:48
2019-20OTT71162743-6243011739.320:07
2020-21OTT56211435+11215112317.118:15
2021-22OTT64102939-15100101218.320:03
2022-23WSH4000-3000020.016:46
2023-24EDM714812-8100001083.712:48
2024-25EDM82131730+91001412310.614:01
2025-26NJD75182543-12242111615.517:33
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—676125176301-11132121113112011.216:14

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

18 goals and 25 assists in 75 games — 43 points, minus-1, at 17:33 a night with 4 power-play goals.

The Finesse Game

The location is the story. 47 per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside 20 feet, median 21, and 18 goals came from 116 shots on goal — a high conversion.

He is not a natural scorer; 125 goals in 676 career games says so. What he does is arrive at the net and take what is available, which at 32 has produced the best goal total of his career.

25 assists is honest middle-6 work.

The Physical Game

6 foot even, 184, and light. 22 penalty minutes. He forechecks properly and kills penalties, and the value has always been in the details rather than in any physical presence.

He came back from a serious knee injury that cost him most of a season and has not looked the same skater since, which is precisely why the shots come from 21 feet now.

The Intangibles

49.0 per cent of the expected goals, 46th percentile — the weakest of New Jersey’s regular forwards — with the goals 40-44 against.

7 points in his last 10, 4 of them goals. He is 32, a 156th overall pick with 301 career points, and precisely the kind of player who gets more valuable as his shot chart tightens.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,054 minutes

Expected goals
49%
46th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.3%
69th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 40 for, 44 against. Expected: 42.3 and 44.1.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
55th
Numbers
46th

The two rank him within 9 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 — 73 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 · 75 games

Top speed
23.2 mph
91st pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.55 a game

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

Distance
2.91 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
80.8 mph
24th 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

7

points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 3 assists, 20 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1054 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 49.0% — 1.4 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 1,054 minutes at five-on-five — 67th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jack Hughes52.6%46.3%54.7%
Cody Glass46.9%50.2%51.0%
Brenden Dillon50.2%48.4%50.3%

52.6% together, 46.3% for him apart and 54.7% for Hughes apart. He was worse away from Hughes, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Hughes 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

187 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.