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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53

Jackson Blake

Carolina Hurricanes Right Wing

17 goals as a rookie and a 59.9 per cent chance share — the 99th percentile, and the best number on the best possession team in hockey.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2023-24CAR1000-2000020.015:18
2024-25CAR80171734+103050614212.013:51
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—81171734+83050614411.813:52

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

17 goals and 17 assists in 80 games for 34 points, plus-10, on 13:51 a night in his first NHL season, with 6 game-winners.

59.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 99th percentile among all skaters, in a bottom-six role. 62 per cent of his shots came from inside 20 feet from a median of 15 — the most extreme interior shot profile on this roster, and among the most extreme in the edition.

The Finesse Game

A small, quick winger who has already worked out that the only shots worth taking are the close ones. He gets to the interior by reading where a puck will be rather than by racing anybody to it, and the release is quick enough to punish the half-second that buys him.

12 per cent conversion on 142 shots is a fair rookie rate and should improve given the locations. The passing is good and not yet a weapon; 17 assists in 80 games understates what he sees.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 185, and light. He is willing on the forecheck without being able to win a puck by force, and he is separated from possession by NHL defencemen more often than he would like.

30 penalty minutes over 80 games. The strength is the ordinary next step and the frame will carry it.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick out of North Dakota, a rookie season of 80 games at 22, and the best underlying numbers on a club that led the league in them.

The caution is that this system produces flattering shares for everybody, and 99th percentile is high even here. The projection is a genuine top-six winger, and the interior shot chart is the reason to believe it rather than the goal total.

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
  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
  • 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.

  • slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored

    70.7% of his attempts in the slot, 97th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it

  • durable· was available

    80 of 82 games

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

  • drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there

    61.2% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 54.4% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.8, 96th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

  • forechecks-aggressivelypresent and ordinary· first man in, and on the puck

    “He is willing on the forecheck without being able to win a puck by force”

  • hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “he is separated from possession by NHL defencemen more often than he would like”

  • playmakerpresent and ordinary· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “The passing is good and not yet a weapon; 17 assists in 80 games understates what he sees.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 878 minutes

Expected goals
61.2%
100th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
61.6%
100th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 35 for, 24 against. Expected: 42.9 and 27.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
80th
Numbers
100th

The numbers rank him 20 points above where the report does. 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 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, 2024-25 · 80 games

Top speed
21.5 mph
21st pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.50 a game

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

Distance
2.32 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
80.9 mph
23rd pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.9

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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 878 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, 2024-25

The club
CAR took 55.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 61.2% — 5.3 above the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 878 minutes at five-on-five — 42nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Sebastian Aho63.9%59.5%55.2%
Sean Walker62.2%60.7%55.1%
Jaccob Slavin60.1%61.8%54.7%

63.9% together, 59.5% for him apart and 55.2% for Aho apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

205 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 62% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.