Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2024-25 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 2024-25 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

10

Daniel Sprong

Vancouver Canucks Right Wing

Forty-three points in twelve minutes a night, on the second-lowest chance share of any forward on the club.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16PIT18202-10000238.78:44
2017-18PIT8213+20001229.113:59
2018-19PIT/ANA6314923-161020312511.211:58
2019-20ANA8112-20100175.914:06
2020-21WSH4213720+7120037417.611:40
2021-22WSH/SEA6314620082001539.212:59
2022-23SEA66212546+131460314714.311:25
2023-24DET76182543-52230116011.312:00
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—3448574159-2661401172111.811:57

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

76 games with Detroit, 18 goals and 25 assists for 43 points, 3 on the power play, 22 penalty minutes, 12:00 a night and minus-5, with 1 game-winner. He took 44.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 787 minutes, the 21st percentile, and his ice went 37-41 against an expectation of 30.24-37.14.

Seven goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and four more conceded than they called for. Forty-four point nine per cent is the second-lowest chance share of any forward on this roster and 43 points in twelve minutes a night is the second-highest total of his career.

The Finesse Game

227 attempts at a median of 33 feet with 19 per cent of them from inside twenty and 30 per cent from beyond forty, 156 of those on goal, converted at 11.3 per cent against a career 11.79 across 721 shots.

Eighty-five career goals and 14 power-play goals in 344 games. The shot is a genuine one and he will take it from anywhere — a thirty-three-foot median attempt in twelve minutes a night is enormous volume for the ice — and only a fifth of his attempts came from inside twenty feet.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 195 and took 22 penalty minutes.

Sixty-six career penalty minutes in 344 games. He is a normal size and plays no physical game at all; the puck is not retrieved, it is received, and eight seasons of clubs deciding he is worth the trade-off have ended the same way.

The Intangibles

Forty-sixth overall in 2015 by Pittsburgh, eight seasons, and Vancouver will be his sixth organisation.

A career minus-2 and 11 game-winners in 344 games. He was born in Amsterdam, he was a second-round pick, and he has scored 46 and 43 points in the last two seasons for two different clubs that both let him go.

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.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
  • 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.

  • perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in

    29.5% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 90th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

  • net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips

    “The shot is a genuine one and he will take it from anywhere — a thirty-three-foot median attempt in twelve minutes a night is enormous volume for the ice — and only a fifth of his attempts came from inside twenty feet.”

  • forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck

    “He is a normal size and plays no physical game at all; the puck is not retrieved, it is received, and eight seasons of clubs deciding he is worth the trade-off have ended the same way.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 787 minutes

Expected goals
44.9%
21st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
46.2%
23rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 41 against. Expected: 30.2 and 37.1.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
62nd
Numbers
21st

The report ranks him 41 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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, 2023-24 · 76 games

Top speed
22.4 mph
63rd pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
1.49 a game

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

Distance
1.90 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
94.2 mph
88th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with DET · 787 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, 2023-24

The club
DET took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.9% — 1.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 787 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Shayne Gostisbehere42.5%46.5%48.7%
Robby Fabbri43.5%45.6%41.8%
Olli Määttä45.4%44.6%51.9%

42.5% together, 46.5% for him apart and 48.7% for Gostisbehere 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

227 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 19% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 30% from beyond forty.