Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

22

Jack McBain

Arizona Coyotes Center

Six-foot-four, sixty-four penalty minutes, and the sixth percentile in shot velocity.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22ARI10213-660001315.414:11
2022-23ARI82121426-8640028514.113:59
2023-24 so far
Career92141529-14700029814.314:00

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

12 goals and 14 assists in 82 games — 26 points at 13:59 a night, minus-8, on 85 shots, converting at 14.12 per cent, and 64 penalty minutes.

41.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 947 minutes, the 7th percentile, starting 38 per cent of his shifts in the attacking end at the 5th. His ice went 31-43 against an expectation of 29.84-41.96, which is close enough to say the shifts were what the numbers say.

A first full season at twenty-three.

The Finesse Game

85 attempts at a median of 20 feet with 49 per cent from inside 20, off a shot measured at 83.2 mph, the 6th percentile.

Twelve goals on 85 shots is 14 per cent, which is a high rate on a soft shot and means the same thing it means for Hayton and Boyd: everything is scored from inside the dots or not at all. 29 points in 92 career games is a fourth-line rate with a third-line body.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 219, and this is the reason he is in the league. He forechecks heavily, he finishes his check, and 70 penalty minutes in 92 career games is the cost of playing that way.

The skating is adequate for the size at 22.3 mph, the 48th percentile. He is not caught from behind and he does not run anybody down either.

The Intangibles

Sixty-third overall in 2018 to Minnesota, and he did three years at Boston College before forcing a trade here rather than signing with the club that drafted him — a route that gives a player unusual leverage and unusual scrutiny.

He is 23. On a club with this little size he will get every chance to become a third-line centre, and the question is entirely whether the hands ever catch up to the frame.

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
  • 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.

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

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

  • forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck

    “He forechecks heavily, he finishes his check, and 70 penalty minutes in 92 career games is the cost of playing that way.”

  • punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He forechecks heavily, he finishes his check, and 70 penalty minutes in 92 career games is the cost of playing that way.”

  • net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips

    “everything is scored from inside the dots or not at all”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 947 minutes

Expected goals
41.6%
7th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
40.3%
2nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 31 for, 43 against. Expected: 29.8 and 42.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
41st
Numbers
7th

The report ranks him 34 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 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 947 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, 2022-23

The club
ARI took 45.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.6% — 3.9 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 947 minutes at five-on-five — 52nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Patrik Nemeth33.5%45.7%43.9%
J.J. Moser38.9%43.0%47.4%
Christian Fischer40.1%42.3%44.4%

33.5% together, 45.7% for him apart and 43.9% for Nemeth 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

118 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 12 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 49% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.