Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2025-26 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 2025-26 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

Philadelphia Flyers Goaltender

Six-foot-five, an .8975 in Calgary, and signed in the summer to compete for a job on the club with the worst goaltending in the league.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21BOS5221173.400149.886
2021-22CGY231362572.752608.906
2022-23CGY271465722.910667.892
2023-24CGY20892683.620574.881
2024-25CGY3012116832.802810.897
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—1054934162973.0042808.894

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

12-11-6 in 30 games for Calgary with an .8975, a 2.80 average and 2 shutouts, facing 810 shots.

It is the second-best save percentage of his career and it came behind a club that finished 9th in the league in goals against. Philadelphia signed him in the summer, and the arithmetic of the move is simple: the club’s goaltending was 42 goals worse than its chances, and an .8975 would have been an enormous improvement on what it got.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 209 and he takes up a great deal of the net by standing in it. The style is deep and blocking rather than aggressive; he sets in the crease and waits for the puck to hit him.

The size covers the top of the net almost completely and the cost is the same as it is for every goaltender built this way — a second chance across the crease is harder for him to reach, and the recovery is the weak part. The rebound control is ordinary. He does not handle the puck well and does not start breakouts.

The Mental Game

Five seasons as a backup on two clubs and he has never held a starting job for a full season. The save percentages read .8859, .9063, .8921, .8815, .8975, which is a goaltender who has not settled.

He is not being asked to be a starter here either, which may be the most sensible thing about the signing.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick of Boston in 2015 out of Prague, and 105 NHL games in with a career .8942.

He is 28. On a club whose 25-year-old incumbent has posted an .8904 and an .883 in consecutive seasons, a competent 30-game backup is worth more than the contract suggests.

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
  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
  • 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

    “The style is deep and blocking rather than aggressive; he sets in the crease and waits for the puck to hit him.”

  • lateral-recoveryhe lacks it· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “a second chance across the crease is harder for him to reach, and the recovery is the weak part.”

  • rebound-controlpresent and ordinary· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is ordinary.”

  • puck-handlinghe lacks it· starts the breakout himself

    “He does not handle the puck well and does not start breakouts.”