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.

19

Daniil But

Utah Mammoth Left Wing

6-5, 21 years old, and the 99th percentile.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2025-26UTA29347+18100437.012:28
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—29347+18100437.012:28

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

3 goals and 4 assists in 29 games — 7 points, plus-1, at 12:28 a night with only 8 penalty minutes. His first professional season in North America.

He turned 21 in February.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is the best on the club. 66 unblocked attempts with 59 per cent from inside 20 feet and a median of 16, and only 18 per cent from beyond 40.

3 goals from that ice is a poor conversion and it is the ordinary shape of a 21-year-old’s first season. The location is the part that is hard to teach and he already has it.

4 assists in 29 games says nothing either way.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 203 pounds, and there is a great deal of room on the frame. 8 penalty minutes.

He goes to the interior, which for a young Russian winger is not a given, and he is not yet strong enough to stay there. 2 summers of weight is the answer and he has had none.

The Intangibles

58.1 per cent of the expected goals — the 99th percentile, the highest figure on the club by 2 and a half points — and 55.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 91st, across 329 minutes, with the goals 12-11.

329 minutes is a very small sample and the caveat belongs in bold. It is still the best number a Utah skater posted.

4 points in his last 10, 2 of them goals. He is 21, the twelfth pick in 2023, and the most interesting page on this roster.

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

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.

  • slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored

    66.7% of his attempts in the slot, 90th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it

  • drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there

    58.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 52.7% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.4, 92nd percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 329 minutes

Expected goals
58.1%
98th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
55.3%
91st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 12 for, 11 against. Expected: 15.7 and 11.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
73rd
Numbers
98th

The numbers rank him 25 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 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 · 29 games

Top speed
21.9 mph
33rd pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.90 a game

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

Distance
2.06 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
88.2 mph
71st 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

4

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 2 assists, 16 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 329 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
UTA took 53.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.1% — 5.0 above the club he did it on.
The role
329 minutes at five-on-five — 8th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Michael Carcone62.0%54.6%55.2%
Jack McBain55.2%60.5%52.4%
Ian Cole61.5%56.3%52.0%

62.0% together, 54.6% for him apart and 55.2% for Carcone apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

66 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 59% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.