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.

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

80

Daniil Tarasov

Columbus Blue Jackets Goaltender

Six foot five, a .9083, and twenty-four games behind the second-worst defence in hockey.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2021-22CBJ402072.400111.937
2022-23CBJ174111573.910528.892
2023-24CBJ248113733.180796.908
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—45122441373.3901435.904

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

8-11-3 with a .9083, a 3.18 average and no shutouts in 24 games at 25, facing 796 shots.

A .9083 behind the second-worst chance suppression in hockey is a better season than the number reads, and it is eleven points of save percentage better than the man who played forty-one.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 203, and he plays deep and large. He sets in the crease and lets the frame take the top of the net away rather than moving for it, and there is very little wasted motion.

The lateral recovery is the cost of the style and it is a real one. He is beaten across the slot more than a smaller goaltender would be, and a play that moves side to side is the way to get him.

The rebound control is decent and the puck-handling is ordinary.

The Mental Game

Forty-five career games across three seasons at a .9045, none of them a full year, all of them behind a defence conceding at this rate.

Twenty-four games and eight wins on a twenty-ninth-place club is not a season anybody can read much from.

The Intangibles

Eighty-sixth overall in 2017, out of Ufa, and 45 NHL games at 25.

He is one of three goaltenders on the roster and the youngest with real minutes. On a club whose crease was exactly neutral, the honest read is that nobody here has yet been given the chance to be more than that.

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

    “**6-5 and 203, and he plays deep and large.** He sets in the crease and lets the frame take the top of the net away rather than moving for it, and there is very little wasted motion.”

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

    “**The lateral recovery is the cost of the style and it is a real one.** He is beaten across the slot more than a smaller goaltender would be, and a play that moves side to side is the way to get him.”

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

    “**The rebound control is decent** and the puck-handling is ordinary.”

  • puck-handlingpresent and ordinary· starts the breakout himself

    “**The rebound control is decent** and the puck-handling is ordinary.”