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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37

Connor Hellebuyck

Winnipeg Jets Goaltender

A .9201 on nineteen hundred and sixty-four shots, the fourth-best in this book.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2015-16WPG2613111562.342683.918
2016-17WPG56261941462.8941572.907
2017-18WPG67441191562.3662048.924
2018-19WPG63342331792.9022051.913
2019-20WPG58312151402.5761796.922
2020-21WPG45241731122.5841335.916
2021-22WPG662927101932.9742155.910
2022-23WPG64372521572.4941964.920
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—4452381543711392.663213604.916

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

37-25-2 in 64 games, .9201, 2.49, four shutouts on 1,964 shots.

That is the fourth-best save percentage of the 35 goaltenders in this book who faced a thousand shots, behind Linus Ullmark, Filip Gustavsson and Ilya Sorokin — and it came on the second-largest workload of the thirty-five.

Those 35 stopped .9067 between them. On 1,964 shots the distance from that rate to his is about twenty-six goals.

Winnipeg’s goaltending was worth plus-10.5 goals against the chances it faced, eighth in the league, and it is worth saying plainly that the club figure understates him: he played sixty-four of the eighty-two games and the measure is spread across everybody.

30.7 shots a night behind a club that finished thirteenth in chance share and eleventh in expected goals against per sixty. Winnipeg allowed the seventh-fewest goals in the league, and this file is why.

Nine seasons, 445 games, and a career .9163.

The Finesse Game

6-4 and 207 pounds, and the method is the simplest in the position: he is enormous, he is square, and he is in the right place before the shot arrives.

He is positionally exact and does not scramble, which is what a .9163 across nine seasons is actually made of. The puck hits him rather than being saved.

The rebound control is very good and the second chances that beat most goaltenders in this book do not often arrive against him.

The glove is a strength and the four shutouts are the visible part of it.

The puck-handling is the weak part of the file and always has been: he leaves it in awkward places and his defencemen take hits they should not.

The seasons have run .9071, .9238, .9127, .9220, .9161, .9104 and .9201 over the last seven, on very large volumes each time. That is the most consistent goaltending record in this edition, and it is the reason he has been given more shots than all but one man in the league.

The Intangibles

A hundred and thirtieth overall in 2012, the fifth round, nine seasons, and a Vezina Trophy in 2019-20.

A career .9163 across 445 games, and seven of the last eight seasons above forty-five games.

He is thirty, on a club that has just lost in the first round and cannot decide whether to rebuild around him or trade him.

A fifth-round goaltender who becomes the most durable elite starter of his generation is the single best draft-value story in this chapter and one of the best in the book. Whatever Winnipeg does next, everything above the goal line last season was ordinary and everything behind it was not.

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-deepa strength· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He is positionally exact and does not scramble, which is what a .9163 across nine seasons is actually made of.”

  • rebound-controla strength· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is very good and the second chances that beat most goaltenders in this book do not often arrive against him.”

  • puck-handlinghe lacks it· starts the breakout himself

    “The puck-handling is the weak part of the file and always has been: he leaves it in awkward places and his defencemen take hits they should not.”