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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75

Jakub Dobes

Montreal Canadiens Goaltender

A .9091 in 16 games at 24, and the first genuine backup this club has had in five years.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2024-25MTL16743402.741440.909
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—16743402.741440.909

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

7-4-3 in 16 games, .9091 with a 2.74 average and 1 shutout on 440 shots in his first NHL action.

A better save percentage than the starter, on the same club in the same season, in a quarter of the games. 440 shots is a small sample and it is enough to have earned a real look.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 215, and the game is large and calm. He plays a deep crease, takes away the top of the net, and does not travel further than the puck requires — the opposite of his partner in almost every respect.

The rebound control is decent and the lateral movement is adequate rather than quick. Behind a club that concedes as many interior chances as this one, the size is the more useful attribute.

The Mental Game

Two seasons at Ohio State, an American League year, and a first NHL run in which he won games on a club fighting for a playoff place without any visible sign of the moment being large.

That is the whole record and it is a good one as far as it goes.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick, a college goaltender who arrived late, and 16 NHL games at 24 that went considerably better than anybody expected.

The projection is a genuine NHL backup and possibly more. On a club whose starter faced the fourth-most shots in the league, having a second goaltender who can play 30 games is worth real points.

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
  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary

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 a deep crease, takes away the top of the net, and does not travel further than the puck requires — the opposite of his partner in almost every respect.”

  • rebound-controlpresent and ordinary· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is decent and the lateral movement is adequate rather than quick.”

  • lateral-recoverypresent and ordinary· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “the lateral movement is adequate rather than quick”