Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 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 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

J.T. Compher

Photo by Quintin Soloviev, CC BY-SA 4.0

J.T. Compher

Detroit Red Wings Left Wing #37

658 games, and the 13th percentile last season.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17COL21325041013010.014:56
2017-18COL69131023-29204231319.916:00
2018-19COL66161632-83143311813.617:29
2019-20COL67112031+91810310610.416:45
2020-21COL4810818+10191024721.314:13
2021-22COL70181533+62541010217.616:19
2022-23COL82173552+83350315411.020:32
2023-24DET77192948-53452010817.619:23
2024-25DET76112132-7245039811.216:41
2025-26DET82111728-13270019511.615:40
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—658129173302-292353081998913.017:06

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

11 goals and 17 assists in all 82 games — 28 points, minus-13, at 15:40 a night.

The Finesse Game

Adequate and no more. 139 unblocked attempts, 43 per cent from inside 20 feet, median 23, and 11 goals. That is decent ice and a poor conversion.

302 points in 658 career games is a third-line rate and this season was under it.

The Physical Game

6 foot even, 191, and he plays a willing two-way game. 27 penalty minutes. He kills penalties on a good unit and takes defensive-zone faceoffs.

The Intangibles

44.4 per cent of the expected goals, 13th percentile, with the expected goals 39.8 to 49.9 against across 1,060 minutes — one of the 2 worst forward marks on the club.

4 points in his last 10.

He is 31 and had one very good season in Colorado on a line that would have flattered anybody. Detroit signed the version of him that appeared in that spring and has been getting this one for 3 years. That is a familiar story and it is nobody’s fault but the club’s.

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.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data

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.

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,060 minutes

Expected goals
44.4%
12th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
46%
19th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 41 for, 54 against. Expected: 39.8 and 49.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
33rd
Numbers
12th

The report ranks him 21 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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, 2025-26 · 82 games

Top speed
22.4 mph
58th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
1.93 a game

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

Distance
2.51 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
85.7 mph
55th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

4

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 3 assists, 12 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1060 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, 2025-26

The club
DET took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.4% — 3.8 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 1,060 minutes at five-on-five — 68th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Ben Chiarot36.1%49.5%45.6%
Moritz Seider55.0%39.5%55.9%
Simon Edvinsson52.2%40.7%52.2%

36.1% together, 49.5% for him apart and 45.6% for Chiarot apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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

139 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 7 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.