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 →

35

Darcy Kuemper

Los Angeles Kings Goaltender

A .914 career save percentage, a Stanley Cup, and a .8904 in thirty-three games.

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
2023-24WSH33131431033.311940.890
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—389178135469552.613111099.914

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

33 games in Washington, 13-14-3, a .8904 save percentage and a 3.31 goals-against average with 1 shutout on 940 shots faced.

That is the eighth-worst save percentage among goaltenders who played 25 games or more in this edition, against a career .914 across 389. Los Angeles sent Pierre-Luc Dubois to Washington to get him, and the man he replaces went .9128 in 54 games here.

The Physical Game

He is 6-5 and 215 and takes up the net by standing in it, and he plays deep in his crease rather than challenging at the top.

Thirty-one career shutouts in 389 games. The size does the positional work and the glove is ordinary for a man that big. He handles the puck well enough to start a break and he does not go wandering with it.

The Mental Game

He tracks through traffic as well as anything else he does, which at 6-5 is the part of the job that carries.

Rebound control is the weakness and has been for a decade; he stops the first one and the second is a coin toss. Thirty-three games is a small enough sample to argue with, and the .8904 is still a long way below anything he has done before.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick in 2009 out of Saskatoon, twelve seasons across five organisations, and 178 wins in 389 games. He won the Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2022 and this is his second spell in Los Angeles.

He is 34 and was acquired to be the starter. One season this far below a career .914 is recoverable and two would not be, and the alternative here is a 32-year-old with one very good season in eight.

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 is 6-5 and 215 and takes up the net by standing in it, and he plays deep in his crease rather than challenging at the top.”

  • plays-aggressivehe lacks it· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “He is 6-5 and 215 and takes up the net by standing in it, and he plays deep in his crease rather than challenging at the top.”

  • puck-handlinga strength· starts the breakout himself

    “He handles the puck well enough to start a break and he does not go wandering with it.”

  • tracks-traffica strength· finds it through a screen

    “He tracks through traffic as well as anything else he does, which at 6-5 is the part of the job that carries.”

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “Rebound control is the weakness and has been for a decade; he stops the first one and the second is a coin toss.”