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.

19

Devin Shore

Minnesota Wild Center

Four hundred and forty-three games, a career minus-53, and twenty-one of them last season.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16DAL3000+2000010.012:07
2016-17DAL82132033-41410011511.314:08
2017-18DAL82112132-30142111238.915:26
2018-19DAL/ANA76101929-12132248212.214:16
2019-20ANA/CBJ455712-1080015010.011:38
2020-21EDM38549-460112718.510:55
2021-22EDM495611-4100103613.99:34
2022-23EDM47189+64000333.08:58
2023-24SEA21134+34000156.78:00
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—4435188139-537355748210.612:31

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

21 games, 1 goal and 3 assists for 4 points, 4 penalty minutes, 8:00 a night and plus-3. He did not play enough five-on-five minutes for an on-ice record.

Eight minutes a night in twenty-one games. There is nothing here to read and there has not been for four years.

The Finesse Game

15 shots in 21 games, converted at 6.7 per cent against a career 10.58.

88 career assists in 443 games. The two thirty-point seasons in Dallas were eight years ago and everything since has been a fourth line. The hands were never the problem and the feet always were.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 206 and finishes checks without hurting anybody.

73 career penalty minutes in 443 games is a very low rate. He blocks shots, takes the defensive-zone draw, and kills penalties with 5 career shorthanded goals.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2012 out of Ajax, three years at Maine, nine seasons across five organisations, and 139 points in 443 games at a career minus-53.

He is 30 and this is a recall. Four hundred and forty-three games is a real career and none of what is left of it will be spent in a lineup that matters.

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.

  • shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it

    “He blocks shots, takes the defensive-zone draw, and kills penalties with 5 career shorthanded goals.”

  • faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it

    “He blocks shots, takes the defensive-zone draw, and kills penalties with 5 career shorthanded goals.”

  • penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short

    “He blocks shots, takes the defensive-zone draw, and kills penalties with 5 career shorthanded goals.”

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He is 6-1 and 206 and finishes checks without hurting anybody.”

The numbers underneath

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 21 games

Top speed
21.4 mph
17th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
0.48 a game

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

Distance
1.33 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
78.4 mph
16th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with SEA · 168 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.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

28 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 25% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 29% from beyond forty.