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

Daniil Tarasov

Columbus Blue Jackets Goaltender

The best save percentage in the Columbus crease last season, at .8920.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2021-22CBJ402072.400111.937
2022-23CBJ174111573.910528.892
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—214131643.660639.900

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

17 games, 4-11-1, .8920, 3.91, on 528 shots.

That is a poor number in isolation and it was the best of the three goaltenders Columbus dressed. Merzlikins finished .8763 and Michael Hutchinson .8750 across sixteen more.

The club conceded 330 goals, 31st in the league, and its expected goals against per sixty at even strength was 3.043 — also 31st. Every goaltending number on this page has to be read through that.

Two seasons, 21 NHL games. He posted .9369 in four appearances the year before.

The Finesse Game

6-5 and 203, and the size is the reason he is here: he is one of the largest goaltenders in the organisation’s history and takes up an enormous amount of the net simply by standing square.

The method is blocking rather than reacting. He plays deep, stays big and lets the shot hit him, which works against volume from range and much less well against lateral plays and second chances — and the second chance is what a club conceding 330 goals gives up most.

The puck-handling is a weakness and Columbus do not ask him to start breakouts.

The Intangibles

86th overall in 2017, out of Ufa, and a Russian goaltender who came over at 20 and has spent four seasons in the American league waiting.

He is 24 with 21 NHL games and a .8920 behind the worst defensive club in hockey. There is no verdict available here in either direction, which is the honest reading and an unusual one for a goaltender of his age.

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

    “He plays deep, stays big and lets the shot hit him, which works against volume from range and much less well against lateral plays and second chances”

  • puck-handlinghe lacks it· starts the breakout himself

    “The puck-handling is a weakness and Columbus do not ask him to start breakouts.”