Armchair Hockey Scout

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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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35

Darcy Kuemper

Washington Capitals Goaltender

A career .9161 across ten thousand shots, and a .9080 in his first year in Washington.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2012-13MIN6120102.080119.916
2013-14MIN261284602.432702.914
2014-15MIN3114122682.603718.905
2015-16MIN21675432.432507.915
2016-17MIN18853553.130562.902
2017-18LAK/ARI291275672.524833.920
2018-19ARI55272081262.3351677.925
2019-20ARI2916112652.222903.928
2020-21ARI2710113662.562710.907
2021-22COL57371241382.5451754.921
2022-23WSH57222671542.8751674.908
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—356165121438522.553010159.916

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

22-26-7 in 57 games, .9080, 2.87, five shutouts on 1,674 shots.

That is sixteenth of the 35 goaltenders in this book who faced a thousand shots — the middle of the pack — and those 35 stopped .9067 between them. On 1,674 shots the distance from that rate to his is about two goals.

Washington’s goaltending was worth minus-5.7 goals against the chances it faced, twentieth in the league.

29.4 shots a night behind a club that finished twentieth in chance share and twenty-third in expected goals against per sixty.

Eleven seasons, 356 games, a career .9161 on 10,159 shots — and that is the number the season has to be read against.

The Finesse Game

6-5 and 215 pounds, and the game is built on covering the net by standing in it: he is square, he is deep, and he does not move more than he has to.

He plays deep in his crease and the trade is the usual one — the shot from distance is absorbed and the play across the crease has further to travel to reach him.

The rebound control is good, and five shutouts in fifty-seven games on a club that finished twenty-fourth is a real number.

The puck-handling is a genuine asset, and behind a defence that was being outshot it saved a good many entries.

The seasons read .9249 on 1,677 shots, .9280 on 903, .9070 on 710, .9213 on 1,754 and .9080 on 1,674. Two of the last five are among the best goaltending seasons anybody had, and two are below the league’s rate, which is the pattern of a good goaltender with a wide spread rather than a declining one.

A career .9161 across ten thousand shots is a genuinely strong figure and it is the best available estimate of him.

The Intangibles

A hundred and sixty-first overall in 2009, the sixth round, eleven seasons, 356 games across Minnesota, Los Angeles, Arizona, Colorado and Washington, and a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2022.

165 wins, 30 shutouts, and a career .9161.

He is thirty-three, in the second year of the contract Washington signed him to the summer after he won.

A sixth-round pick with a Stanley Cup and a career .9161 is not a problem, and a .9080 in front of a club that finished twenty-fourth is not evidence that he is one. What the club needs is the 2021-22 version, and the record says it is inside him about half the time.

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

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 in his crease and the trade is the usual one — the shot from distance is absorbed and the play across the crease has further to travel to reach him.”

  • puck-handlinga strength· starts the breakout himself

    “The puck-handling is a genuine asset, and behind a defence that was being outshot it saved a good many entries.”

  • rebound-controla strength· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is good, and five shutouts in fifty-seven games on a club that finished twenty-fourth is a real number.”