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.
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32

Dustin Wolf

Calgary Flames Goaltender

A hundred and sixty-six pounds — the lightest goaltender in this edition — and the crease.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2022-23CGY110011.00024.958
2023-24CGY17771503.160467.893
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—18871513.030491.896

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

7-7-1 with an .8929, a 3.16 average and no shutouts in 17 games at 22, facing 467 shots.

It leaves him at a career .8961 across 18 games. The club’s goaltending as a whole came in 16.8 goals worse than the chances faced, 27th in the league, and it has since traded the man who played forty-eight of them.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 166 pounds — the lightest goaltender in this edition by six pounds.

He plays aggressively, meeting the shooter at the top of the crease, because at that size there is no alternative: a goaltender who sits deep at 166 pounds is simply a smaller target. The lateral recovery is quick and it has to be, and the technique is exact with almost no wasted motion. The glove is very quick.

The rebound control is the thing that decides the career. Against NHL traffic the second chance has to go to the corner and there is not yet enough evidence to say whether it does.

The Mental Game

He is one of the most decorated goaltenders in American-league history and he has eighteen NHL games.

Seventeen of them came behind a defence that was 17th at suppressing chances on a club that finished twenty-third, and an .8929 in that context says nothing either way.

The Intangibles

Two hundred and fourteenth overall in 2019 — a seventh-round pick — out of Everett, and 18 NHL games at 23.

A club that was 27th in goaltending traded its starter of four years and handed the crease to a 166-pound seventh-round pick. It is either the boldest decision of the off-season or the most reckless one, and there is no third goaltender on the page to make it reversible.

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
  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary

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-aggressivea strength· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “**He plays aggressively, meeting the shooter at the top of the crease**, because at that size there is no alternative: a goaltender who sits deep at 166 pounds is simply a smaller target.”

  • lateral-recoverya strength· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “**The lateral recovery is quick and it has to be**, and the technique is exact with almost no wasted motion.”

  • rebound-controlpresent and ordinary· where the second chance ends up

    “**The rebound control is the thing that decides the career.** Against NHL traffic the second chance has to go to the corner and there is not yet enough evidence to say whether it does.”