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.

15

Dryden Hunt

Calgary Flames Left Wing

Undrafted, two hundred and thirty games across four clubs, and eight goals for on his ice against eighteen.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18FLA11011-52000120.010:34
2018-19FLA31371008000535.711:04
2019-20FLA21044024000330.010:30
2020-21ARI26358-64000397.711:58
2021-22NYR7661117-1052002946.412:17
2022-23NYR/COL/TOR37303-10240002313.08:04
2023-24CGY28358+17001339.111:08
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—230183351-301210032876.311:01

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

3 goals and 5 assists in 28 games — 8 points at 11:08 a night, plus-1, with 1 game-winner on 33 shots at 9.09 per cent, and 7 penalty minutes.

49.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 304 minutes, the 47th percentile. His ice went 14-13 against an expectation of 11.31-11.61 — three goals of scoring missing and six conceded above expectation in three hundred minutes.

The Finesse Game

33 attempts at a median of 27 feet, with 39 per cent from inside 20 and 15 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 9.09 per cent. Eighteen goals in 230 NHL games.

5 assists. He does not create at NHL level and he is not asked to — the job is to get the puck out of his own end and change.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 193. He forechecks honestly and finishes his checks, and he competes on the wall without winning many against size.

7 penalty minutes in 28 games and 121 in 230 for his career. He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Red Deer, and 230 NHL games and 51 points at 28 across four clubs, most of the career spent between the NHL and the American league.

An undrafted forward with 230 NHL games has already had the career his draft position implied was impossible, and on this roster he is the thirteenth forward.

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.

  • undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached

    “**Undrafted**, out of Red Deer, and **230 NHL games and 51 points at 28** across four clubs, most of the career spent between the NHL and the American league.”

  • forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck

    “**He forechecks honestly and finishes his checks**, and he competes on the wall without winning many against size.”

  • wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line

    “**He forechecks honestly and finishes his checks**, and he competes on the wall without winning many against size.”

  • retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty

    “He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.”

  • agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation

    “He does not retaliate and he is not an agitator.”

  • playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “**He does not create at NHL level and he is not asked to** — the job is to get the puck out of his own end and change.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 304 minutes

Expected goals
49.3%
47th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
50.3%
57th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 14 for, 13 against. Expected: 11.3 and 11.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
11th
Numbers
47th

The numbers rank him 36 points above where the report does. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 58 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, 2023-24 · 28 games

Top speed
21.2 mph
13th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.50 a game

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

Distance
1.75 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
86.8 mph
50th 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 · 304 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, 2023-24

The club
CGY took 49.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.3% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
The role
304 minutes at five-on-five — 6th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Rasmus Andersson44.9%52.2%48.9%
Yegor Sharangovich44.8%51.6%49.5%
Jonathan Huberdeau50.2%48.9%50.2%

44.9% together, 52.2% for him apart and 48.9% for Andersson 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

46 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 15% from beyond forty.