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.
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88

Jaycob Megna

Florida Panthers Defense

Six foot six, a seventh-round pick, and the seventh percentile of chances in Chicago.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17ANA1000+100000—15:20
2017-18ANA14011-4200070.015:43
2018-19ANA28134-112000313.214:32
2021-22SJS44268-116000405.019:07
2022-23SJS/SEA5411112+321000561.818:52
2023-24CHI44022-1522000280.017:31
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—18542327-17730001622.517:41

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

44 games in Chicago, no goals and 2 assists, 22 penalty minutes, 17:31 a night and minus-15. He took 41.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 694 minutes, the 7th percentile, and his ice went 19-34 against an expectation of 22.68-32.24, all of it with the Blackhawks.

Four goals of scoring that did not arrive and two more conceded than the chances called for, on the second-worst chance share of anybody who will dress for Florida. Seventeen minutes a night on the 31st-place club is a description of the club.

The Finesse Game

28 shots at a median of 59 feet with 92 per cent from beyond 40 and not one goal. Four goals in 185 career games.

23 career assists in 185 games. He gets the puck to the nearest available option and nothing else. The 59-foot median is the longest average shot of any defenceman in this edition, and it is a man throwing pucks at the net because there is no other play.

The Physical Game

He is 6-6 and 214 and defends with his reach.

22 penalty minutes in 44 games is an ordinary rate and 73 in 185 career games is low. He blocks shots and clears the crease and does not hit anybody hard.

The Intangibles

A seventh-round pick in 2012 out of Plantation, Florida, six seasons, and 27 points in 185 games. He was born twenty miles from the arena.

He is 31 and has never held a full-time job in the league. This is a seventh defenceman signed to play when somebody is hurt, and the chance share says the club should try not to need him.

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.

  • defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens

    “He is 6-6 and 214 and defends with his reach.”

  • shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it

    “He blocks shots and clears the crease and does not hit anybody hard.”

  • clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net

    “He blocks shots and clears the crease and does not hit anybody hard.”

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He blocks shots and clears the crease and does not hit anybody hard.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 694 minutes

Expected goals
41.3%
7th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
42.1%
4th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 19 for, 34 against. Expected: 22.7 and 32.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
1st
Numbers
7th

The two rank him within 6 points of one another. 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.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 52 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, 2023-24 · 44 games

Top speed
21.3 mph
34th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7

Bursts over 20 mph
0.25 a game

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

Distance
2.41 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
80.8 mph
10th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 90.2

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

2023-24 with CHI · 694 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, 2023-24

The club
CHI took 41.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.3% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 694 minutes at five-on-five — 31st percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Kevin Korchinski38.5%45.1%41.5%
Philipp Kurashev38.3%43.1%41.8%
Nick Foligno44.5%40.2%42.9%

38.5% together, 45.1% for him apart and 41.5% for Korchinski 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

38 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 0 of them goals. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 92% from beyond forty.