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.
← 2024-25 edition
28

Ivan Fedotov

Philadelphia Flyers Goaltender

Six-foot-seven, the tallest goaltender in this edition, with three NHL games behind him.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2023-24PHI3011104.95053.811
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—3011104.95053.811

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

3 games, 0-1-1, an .8113 and a 4.95, 53 shots faced.

Fifty-three shots is the whole of his NHL career and nothing can be read from them. Philadelphia’s crease came in 29.3 goals worse than the chances it faced, thirty-first in the league, and he was on the ice for three games of it.

The Physical Game

He is 6-7 and 209 — the tallest goaltender in this edition — and takes away the top of the net without moving.

At that height there is very little clean space above the pads when he is set, and shooters have to beat him low or off a rebound. He plays deep and square and lets the puck come to him rather than challenging out; a goaltender that tall who plays deep is covering the posts with his shoulders.

The Mental Game

An .8113 across 53 shots at 27, in a first NHL season that lasted three games.

The recovery across a crease that large is the whole question and three games do not answer it. Very tall goaltenders are slow to get from post to post and quick to be beaten on the second shot, and nothing in the record here says which way this one goes.

The Intangibles

188th overall in 2015, one season, 3 games at 27.

A seventh-round pick from nine years before who reached the NHL at 27 and played three games. He is the backup on a club whose starter has 63 games of NHL experience, which is 66 games of goaltending between the two of them.

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 plays deep and square and lets the puck come to him rather than challenging out; a goaltender that tall who plays deep is covering the posts with his shoulders.”

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

    “Very tall goaltenders are slow to get from post to post and quick to be beaten on the second shot, and nothing in the record here says which way this one goes.”