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.

Dylan Cozens

Photo by CloutsnChara Sports Cards, CC BY 3.0

Dylan Cozens

Ottawa Senators Center #24

The 98th percentile, and 48 goals for against 54.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21BUF414913-1516100626.514:21
2021-22BUF79132538-19552011608.115:54
2022-23BUF81313768-34152121114.716:30
2023-24BUF79182947-4422312009.017:14
2024-25BUF/OTT82163147-17685021888.517:04
2025-26OTT82283159-759130320513.717:02
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—444110162272-652812858102610.716:32

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

28 goals and 31 assists in all 82 games — 59 points, minus-7, at 17:02 a night with 13 power-play goals and 59 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

290 unblocked attempts with 41 per cent from inside 20 feet, median 23, and 28 goals. That is high volume from good ice.

The shot is heavy and the hands work at speed. 31 assists is a fair supporting number.

110 goals in 444 career games, and this was the best season of his life after 3 difficult years in Buffalo.

The Physical Game

6-3, 205, and he plays a genuinely hard game — 59 penalty minutes, a willing forechecker, and he does not avoid the interior.

The Intangibles

59.5 per cent of the expected goals, 99th percentile, and 56.6 per cent of the shot attempts, 94th, with the chances running 52.6 to 35.8 in his favour across 1,000 minutes.

The goals went 43 for and 43 against.

That is a 21 goal hole on a 15-goal chance advantage — the second-largest gap on a roster full of them, behind Spence. Ottawa’s 3 goaltenders stopped .8907, .8696 and .860.

8 points in his last 10, 4 of them goals. He is 25 and the minus-7 on his record is one of the most misleading numbers in this book.

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.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data

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.

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

  • drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there

    59.5% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 53.0% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.5, 95th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,065 minutes

Expected goals
59.5%
99th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
56.8%
94th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 43 for, 43 against. Expected: 52.6 and 35.8.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
82nd
Numbers
99th
Blind
61st

The two rank him within 17 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.

The same player was graded a second time from his biography and his box score alone, with the measured record withheld. That reading lands 38 points from the numbers; this one lands 17. Across the whole control the two distances come out the same, which is worth knowing in both directions: the arithmetic on both sides of the sighted reading did not buy it any accuracy, and it did not cost it any either.

All three 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 — 78 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 · 82 games

Top speed
23.7 mph
98th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
2.57 a game

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

Distance
2.66 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
90.0 mph
84th 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

8

points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 4 assists, 30 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1065 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
OTT took 54.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 59.5% — 4.6 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 1,065 minutes at five-on-five — 68th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Ridly Greig60.3%58.7%47.2%
Brady Tkachuk63.8%55.6%56.9%
Jordan Spence66.9%55.4%58.6%

60.3% together, 58.7% for him apart and 47.2% for Greig apart. Greig was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Greig than for him.

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

290 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 28 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.