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.

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

32

Filip Gustavsson

Minnesota Wild Goaltender

A .9309 in 39 games, then an .8995 in 45, and 111 career games to decide which is him.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21OTT9512172.160254.933
2021-22OTT185121623.550574.892
2022-23MIN392297812.1031173.931
2023-24MIN45201841293.0631283.899
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—1115240142892.7363284.912

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

45 games, 20-18-4, an .8995 save percentage and a 3.06 goals-against average with 3 shutouts on 1,283 shots faced.

The season before he had gone .9309 in 39 games. A fall of thirty-one points of save percentage in a year, behind the second-best chance suppression in hockey, and the club finished 28th at goaltending because of it.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 184 and plays a quick, deep game, getting square early rather than covering ground.

Six career shutouts in 111 games. He is light for a modern goaltender and he compensates by being set before the shot arrives, which works until the puck moves laterally. The glove is the better hand.

The Mental Game

Rebound control is where the two seasons differ most; the .9309 year he swallowed the first shot and the .8995 year he did not.

He tracks through traffic well enough and he does not handle the puck much. One hundred and eleven career games is not enough to know which of the last two seasons is the player, and that uncertainty is the club’s whole problem.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick in 2016 out of Skelleftea, four seasons across two organisations, and 52 wins in 111 games at a career .9120.

He is 26 and was given the job on the strength of one very good season and did not hold it. Minnesota has run it back rather than replace him, which is either patience or the absence of an alternative.

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.

  • plays-deepa strength· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He is 6-2 and 184 and plays a quick, deep game, getting square early rather than covering ground.”

  • plays-aggressivehe lacks it· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “He is 6-2 and 184 and plays a quick, deep game, getting square early rather than covering ground.”

  • lateral-recoveryhe lacks it· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “He is light for a modern goaltender and he compensates by being set before the shot arrives, which works until the puck moves laterally.”

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

    “Rebound control is where the two seasons differ most; the .9309 year he swallowed the first shot and the .8995 year he did not.”

  • tracks-traffica strength· finds it through a screen

    “He tracks through traffic well enough and he does not handle the puck much.”

  • puck-handlinghe lacks it· starts the breakout himself

    “He tracks through traffic well enough and he does not handle the puck much.”