Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

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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80

Dan Vladar

Calgary Flames Goaltender

An .892 in twenty-seven games, which is exactly what the man he backs up posted.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21BOS5221173.400149.886
2021-22CGY231362572.752608.906
2022-23CGY271465722.910667.892
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—55291481462.8921424.897

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

27 games, 14-6-5, an .8921 save percentage and a 2.91 goals-against average, with no shutouts on 667 shots faced.

Markstrom posted .8923 and Vladar .8921. Two goaltenders, the same club, essentially the same number — which is the strongest available evidence that what happened in Calgary’s crease last season was not one man having a bad year.

That said, the club still gave up 17.5 goals more than expected, and both of them are responsible for it. 55 career games at .898.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 209 and he plays a big, blocking game — deep in the crease, square early, relying on size rather than reaction.

Behind a defence that finished fourth in expected goals against, the shots he faced were of unusually low quality, and an .892 against that is worse than it looks. The rebound control is the visible weakness and it is the same one the club’s other goaltender has.

The Mental Game

Twenty-seven games as a backup on a club expected to contend, and the numbers did not move in either direction.

He has never been given a starter’s run and there is no evidence in 55 career games either way. What can be said is that he did not lose the confidence of a coaching staff that had every reason to look elsewhere.

The Intangibles

Seventy-fifth overall in 2015 to Boston, out of Czechia, and he arrived here for a third-round pick.

He is 26. Calgary’s season turns on goaltending and its two goaltenders posted identical, poor numbers — the club needs one of them to be much better and has no particular reason to expect it.

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

    “deep in the crease, square early, relying on size rather than reaction”

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is the visible weakness and it is the same one the club's other goaltender has.”