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.

Declan Chisholm

Photo by Jenn G from Seattle, WA, CC BY-SA 2.0

Declan Chisholm

New Jersey Devils Defense #47

29 shots, and not one of them from inside 20 feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22WPG2000+1000040.012:57
2023-24WPG/MIN31369-7182002910.316:31
2024-25MIN6621012-510101692.917:00
2025-26WSH26167+34000205.013:44
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—12562228-8323011224.916:08

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

1 goal and 6 assists in 26 games — 7 points, plus-3, at 13:44 a night with 4 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Washington. 56 games missed.

The Finesse Game

29 unblocked attempts from a median of 54 feet, 83 per cent of them from beyond 40 and not one from inside 20. 1 goal.

That is a defenceman who shoots when the point is open and does nothing else with the puck in the offensive zone. 28 points in 125 career games is a fair third-pair rate; 6 assists in 26 games is the honest version of it.

The Physical Game

6-1, 205, and average in every direction. 4 penalty minutes in 26 games.

The skating is the best thing about him — he retrieves and exits cleanly and does not get hemmed in. He does not clear a crease and is not asked to.

The Intangibles

44.8 per cent of the expected goals, 14th percentile, and 48.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 39th, across 345 minutes in Washington, with the goals 16-13 in his favour.

The goals ran well ahead of the chances, and Washington’s goaltending came in 29 goals better than the chances it faced, the best in the league. That plus-3 belongs to Washington’s goaltenders rather more than it belongs to him.

He is 26, a 150th overall pick, and a seventh defenceman who can play 15 minutes without being hidden. On a New Jersey blue line that lost most of a season to injury, that is a real job.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 345 minutes

Expected goals
44.8%
14th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.3%
39th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 16 for, 13 against. Expected: 14.0 and 17.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
8th
Numbers
14th

The two rank him within 6 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

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 — 63 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 · 26 games

Top speed
21.5 mph
43rd pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6

Bursts over 20 mph
0.38 a game

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

Distance
1.83 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
91.2 mph
54th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 88.9

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 15 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

6

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 5 assists, 13 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with WSH · 345 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
WSH took 49.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.8% — 4.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
345 minutes at five-on-five — 9th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Dylan Strome40.1%46.6%48.9%
Trevor van Riemsdyk51.2%41.6%49.3%
Anthony Beauvillier45.9%44.3%48.5%

40.1% together, 46.6% for him apart and 48.9% for Strome apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

29 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 20 feet. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 83% from beyond forty.