Armchair Hockey Scout

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2025-26 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 2025-26 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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31

Igor Shesterkin

New York Rangers Goaltender

27-29-5 and a .9046 in the first season of the largest goaltending contract ever signed, and the club's goaltending still finished 10th.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2019-20NYR121020292.520424.932
2020-21NYR3516143832.622987.916
2021-22NYR53361341062.0761622.935
2022-23NYR58371381442.4831719.916
2023-24NYR55361721412.5841606.912
2024-25NYR61272951672.8661751.905
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—27416288226702.52218109.917

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

27-29-5 in 61 games with a .9046, a 2.86 average and 6 shutouts, facing 1,751 shots — among the heaviest workloads in the league.

The club’s goaltending came in 9.8 goals better than the chances faced, 10th in the league, behind a defence that was 28th at suppressing them. A .9046 with 6 shutouts is an unusual line: it says the bad nights were bad and the good ones were closed, and it is the worst save percentage of his career.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 199, and the most technically complete goaltender in this chapter. He is square almost without exception, he reads the play across the slot before it arrives, and the depth management is the signature — he never travels further out than the shot requires.

The glove is excellent and the lateral movement is genuinely quick for a positional goaltender. The rebound control is the one ordinary part of it, and in front of a club conceding chances at the 28th-ranked rate it was punished more often than it would be anywhere else. He handles the puck competently and does not start a breakout with it.

The Mental Game

This is the reason for the contract. He has twice carried a bad defensive club further than it deserved to go, and the record in elimination games is the best thing on his file.

61 starts behind the 28th-ranked chance suppression is a season of being shot at, and he did not visibly come apart at any point in it. A .9046 across that is a disappointing number and it is not the same thing as a bad goaltender, which the 9.8 goals of surplus says plainly.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick who did not arrive from Russia until he was 23, won the Vezina in his second full season, and signed an eight-year extension in December that made him the highest-paid goaltender in the history of the league.

274 games, a .9174 career save percentage, and 21 shutouts. He is 29 and the contract runs into his late thirties. Everything about this roster’s next five years is built on the assumption that the last season was the floor.

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
  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary

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

    “the depth management is the signature — he never travels further out than the shot requires.”

  • lateral-recoverya strength· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “The glove is excellent and the lateral movement is genuinely quick for a positional goaltender.”

  • rebound-controlpresent and ordinary· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is the one ordinary part of it”

  • tracks-traffica strength· finds it through a screen

    “He is square almost without exception, he reads the play across the slot before it arrives”

  • puck-handlingpresent and ordinary· starts the breakout himself

    “He handles the puck competently and does not start a breakout with it.”