Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.
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35

Ilya Samsonov

Vegas Golden Knights Goaltender

A hundred and two career wins against 39 losses, and the third-lowest save percentage in this edition.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2019-20WSH261662602.551689.913
2020-21WSH191341492.692499.902
2021-22WSH44231251193.0231145.896
2022-23TOR4227105962.3341184.919
2023-24TOR4023781203.1331087.890
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—17110239214442.76134604.904

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

40 games with Toronto, 23-7-8 with an .8896 and a 3.13, 3 shutouts, facing 1,087 shots.

That figure was tied for the third-lowest of any goaltender who played twenty-five games, and he won 23 of the 40 anyway. A club that scored 303 goals is the reason both of those are true.

The Physical Game

He is 6-3 and 208.

He is quick across the crease and plays an athletic game rather than a positional one, coming out to meet the shot and relying on the recovery to get back. The glove is genuinely good; the trouble is the second shot after a rebound he has pushed back into the slot.

The Mental Game

A career .9036 across 171 games with 13 shutouts.

A .9189 in 42 games two seasons ago and an .8896 in 40 last season is a goaltender who has been both things inside two years. Three of his five seasons have finished under .9020.

The Intangibles

Twenty-second overall in 2015 by Washington, five seasons, and Vegas will be his third organisation.

A hundred and two career wins against 39 losses in 171 games. He is 27, that is a win-loss record very few goaltenders have, and almost none of it is his doing.

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-aggressivea strength· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “He is quick across the crease and plays an athletic game rather than a positional one, coming out to meet the shot and relying on the recovery to get back.”

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

    “The glove is genuinely good; the trouble is the second shot after a rebound he has pushed back into the slot.”