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.

17

Dominic James

Tampa Bay Lightning Center

43 games, 7 goals, and 25 goals for against 13.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2025-26TBL437815+480005612.512:14
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—437815+480005612.512:14

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

7 goals and 8 assists in 43 games — 15 points, plus-4, at 12:14 a night with only 8 penalty minutes. His first NHL season, at 23.

The Finesse Game

84 unblocked attempts, 8 goals, median 26 feet with 36 per cent from inside 20. That is a fair conversion for a first-year forward in 12 minutes a night.

8 assists in 43 games is modest. The speed is the tool and everything else is developing.

The Physical Game

6 foot even, 190, and light. 8 penalty minutes in 43 games is among the lowest rates on the club.

He does not go to the wall and does not win pucks. The skating is genuinely quick — that is why he is here — and it is currently the only thing separating him from the American League.

The Intangibles

52.7 per cent of the expected goals, 75th percentile, and 53.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 85th, across 486 minutes, with the goals 19 for and 16 against.

That is a very good fourth-line season and a small sample on the best possession club in the conference, and both caveats belong on the page.

6 points in his last 10, 4 of them goals. He is 24, a 173rd overall pick out of Minnesota-Duluth, and the sort of late-round forward Tampa keeps finding.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 486 minutes

Expected goals
52.7%
75th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.7%
85th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 19 for, 16 against. Expected: 19.6 and 17.6.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
55th
Numbers
75th

The numbers rank him 20 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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 — 73 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 · 43 games

Top speed
23.7 mph
97th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
2.56 a game

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

Distance
2.02 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
86.1 mph
57th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

6

points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 2 assists, 27 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 486 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
TBL took 53.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.7% — 1.2 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 486 minutes at five-on-five — 16th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Gage Goncalves58.0%48.3%56.5%
Oliver Bjorkstrand51.7%53.5%48.0%
Charle-Edouard D'Astous54.0%52.1%55.8%

58.0% together, 48.3% for him apart and 56.5% for Goncalves apart. He was worse away from Goncalves, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Goncalves did.

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

84 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.