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 2025-26 report →

8

Henry Thrun

San Jose Sharks Defense

Twenty minutes a night at 22, on the worst club in the league.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23SJS8022-3000070.019:52
2023-24SJS513811-2216200486.320:00
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—5931013-2516200555.519:59

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

51 games, 3 goals and 8 assists for 11 points, 2 on the power play, 16 penalty minutes, 20:00 a night and minus-22. He took 38.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 871 minutes, the 8th percentile, and his ice went 26-46 against an expectation of 26.54-42.24.

Level with the chances at the offensive end and four more conceded than they called for. Twenty minutes a night from a 22-year-old on the club that gave up the most chances in hockey is a hard place to learn the job.

The Finesse Game

71 attempts at a median of 50 feet with 68 per cent of them from beyond forty and 4 per cent from inside twenty, 47 of those on goal, converted at 6.3 per cent against a career 5.45 across 55 shots.

Ten career assists against 3 goals in 59 games, and two power-play goals among them. He moves the puck up quickly and takes the first option rather than holding for a better one, which is what a young defenceman does when the club in front of him cannot hold a zone.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 211 and took 16 penalty minutes.

Sixteen career penalty minutes in 59 games is a remarkably low total for a defenceman playing twenty minutes a night. He defends with position and reach rather than contact, and the frame suggests there is more physical game available than he has used so far.

The Intangibles

One hundred and first overall in 2019 by Anaheim, two seasons, two organisations, and 13 points in 59 games.

A career minus-25 in 59 games. He was a fourth-round pick who was handed top-four minutes in his first full season, which says as much about the club as about him.

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

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.

  • transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “He moves the puck up quickly and takes the first option rather than holding for a better one, which is what a young defenceman does when the club in front of him cannot hold a zone.”

  • defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens

    “He defends with position and reach rather than contact, and the frame suggests there is more physical game available than he has used so far.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 871 minutes

Expected goals
38.6%
2nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
42.6%
7th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 26 for, 46 against. Expected: 26.5 and 42.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
57th
Numbers
2nd

The report ranks him 55 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 71 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, 2023-24 · 51 games

Top speed
22.0 mph
66th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7

Bursts over 20 mph
0.41 a game

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

Distance
2.71 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
93.1 mph
58th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 90.2

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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 871 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, 2023-24

The club
SJS took 40.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 38.6% — 2.2 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 871 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jan Rutta38.9%38.3%37.6%
Fabian Zetterlund39.8%37.9%42.3%
Mikael Granlund34.7%40.5%43.1%

38.9% together, 38.3% for him apart and 37.6% for Rutta apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

71 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 68% from beyond forty.