Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2023-24 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 2023-24 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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32

Felix Sandstrom

Philadelphia Flyers Goaltender

Three wins in twenty games, and an .8800 that is the worst figure in this batch.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2021-22PHI5041163.230177.910
2022-23PHI203123693.720575.880
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—253164853.620752.887

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

3-12-3 in 20 games, .8800, 3.72, no shutouts on 575 shots.

28.8 shots a night — a lighter workload than Carter Hart’s behind the same club — and an .8800 that is the worst save percentage of any goaltender in this batch at any volume.

Twenty games is a small sample and this book will say the obvious: a save percentage moves twenty points on five pucks at that size. What it will also say is that Hart faced a heavier load behind the same blue line and posted .9069, and that difference across 575 shots is fifteen goals.

Two seasons, 25 NHL games, a 3.62 career goals-against average.

The Finesse Game

6-2 and 211, and a technique that is orthodox without being sharp.

He plays square and upright and relies on the shot hitting him, which works against the clean attempt from distance and does not work against much else.

The rebound control is the problem and it is not a small one. Pucks come off him into the slot rather than to the corner, and behind a club that concedes as many attempts as Philadelphia that is the difference between .8800 and .9069.

He handles the puck adequately and is not asked to do much of it.

The Intangibles

Seventieth overall in 2015, the third round, out of Gavle, and 25 NHL games across two seasons at twenty-six.

Twenty-five NHL games spread across two years, and an .8800 in the larger of them.

He is twenty-six, which for a goaltender is early middle age rather than a prospect, and on a club that has Hart at twenty-five and Ersson at twenty-three the file is a third goaltender. Nothing in twenty-five games argues for more.

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.

  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
  • 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.

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “Pucks come off him into the slot rather than to the corner, and behind a club that concedes as many attempts as Philadelphia that is the difference between .8800 and .9069.”

  • plays-deeppresent and ordinary· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He plays square and upright and relies on the shot hitting him, which works against the clean attempt from distance and does not work against much else.”

  • puck-handlingpresent and ordinary· starts the breakout himself

    “He handles the puck adequately and is not asked to do much of it.”