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.

Ethan Bear

Photo by Tlop2000, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ethan Bear

New York Islanders Defense #74

275 games, and none in the last 2 seasons.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18EDM18134-1110100205.018:38
2019-20EDM7151621-433101995.121:58
2020-21EDM43268-114001533.817:58
2021-22CAR585914+120002975.116:05
2022-23VAN6131316+625001754.018:32
2023-24WSH24134-510001244.214:54
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—275175067-141122063684.618:30

No games in 2025-26. The season above is the last one he played, and everything on this page should be read with that gap in it.

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.

2023-24

1 goal and 3 assists in 24 games, minus-5, at 14:54 a night with 10 penalty minutes. He has not played an NHL game in the 2 seasons since.

The Finesse Game

24 shots on goal in 24 games and 1 goal. 67 points in 275 career games, most of them assists — he was drafted and developed as a puck-moving defenceman and the passing was always the half that worked.

There is no recent evidence, which is the honest position.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 219 pounds, which is an unusual build for the position — short and genuinely thick. He defends with body position rather than reach.

10 penalty minutes in 24 games.

The Intangibles

A serious shoulder injury and then a long stretch without a contract. 275 NHL games is a real career and it stopped abruptly at 26.

There is no 5-on-5 record for him in this edition because there is no season to draw one from.

He is 29 and signed to a club whose blue line finished 28th in expected goals against, which is the sort of place a player gets another chance. That is the whole of what can be said with any confidence.