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.

Conor Garland

Photo by Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Conor Garland

Columbus Blue Jackets Right Wing #83

5-10, 165 pounds, and the 18th percentile.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19ARI4713518+11240211811.012:47
2019-20ARI68221739+12040515813.914:09
2020-21ARI49122739-3263011358.917:55
2021-22VAN77193352+18361032039.416:24
2022-23VAN81172946-53120216710.215:07
2023-24VAN82202747+193510320010.014:32
2024-25VAN81193150-135270417111.118:39
2025-26VAN/CBJ71122133-21342111378.817:12
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—556134190324-324624121128910.415:55

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

12 goals and 21 assists in 71 games — 33 points, minus-21, at 17:12 a night. His 5-on-5 work was done in Vancouver.

The Finesse Game

A relentless small forward who plays a puck-possession game built on refusing to give it up. He works the wall, he cuts back, and he makes defencemen commit before he moves it.

The shooting has fallen away: 216 unblocked attempts, 12 goals, median 28 feet with 35 per cent inside 20. 134 goals in 556 career games says he used to finish better than this.

21 assists in 71 games is the floor of what he offers.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 165 pounds, level with Stankoven and Lardis as the lightest skaters in this edition. He does not win battles by force; he wins them by being harder to shake off than anyone expects, and 34 penalty minutes says he does not avoid them.

The Intangibles

The numbers turned against him last season and it is worth being direct about it: 46.3 per cent of the expected goals, 18th percentile, with the expected goals 39.6 to 46.0 across 947 minutes. That is his worst season by the underlying measures.

2 points in his last 10.

He is 30. 165 pound winger whose value came from possession and finishing has lost ground on both, and Columbus has bought him at the point where the shape of the decline matters more than the name.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 947 minutes

Expected goals
46.3%
23rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.1%
28th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 28 for, 41 against. Expected: 39.6 and 46.0.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
38th
Numbers
23rd

The two rank him within 15 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 — 70 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 · 71 games

Top speed
22.9 mph
81st pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.44 a game

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

Distance
2.81 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
84.1 mph
45th 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

2

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 2 assists, 18 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with VAN · 691 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
CBJ took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.3% — 5.3 below the club he did it on.
The role
947 minutes at five-on-five — 54th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Filip Hronek42.4%48.1%45.7%
Marcus Pettersson42.9%47.5%42.5%
Elias Pettersson44.0%47.0%43.3%

42.4% together, 48.1% for him apart and 45.7% for Hronek apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

216 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 21 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.