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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47

Jayden Struble

Montreal Canadiens Defense

A 56.3 per cent chance share — the best on the blue line — in the smallest defensive role.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2023-24MTL563710-357000476.416:07
2024-25MTL5621113+252000474.314:57
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—11251823-1109000945.315:32

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

2 goals and 11 assists in 56 games for 13 points, plus-2, on 14:57 a night.

55.7 per cent at five-on-five, the 93rd percentile — by far the best figure on this blue line, over 748 minutes. His on-ice goals were 27-31 against an expected 33.9-26.9, so the results ran 10 goals worse than the play.

The Finesse Game

Modest. 47 shots and 2 goals with 81 per cent from beyond 40 feet, and 11 assists in 56 games is a third-pair total.

The skating is genuinely good and the first pass is quick. He does not create and does not need to.

The Physical Game

6 feet and 207, and he plays a hard, physical game for a third-pair defenceman. He finishes checks, defends the front of his net, and does not get pushed around.

52 penalty minutes over 56 games is a high rate and it is the one thing standing between him and more ice time on a club with a 27th-ranked penalty kill.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick out of Northeastern, three seasons of being moved in and out of the lineup, and the best underlying numbers on the roster’s blue line.

At 24 the projection is a third-pair defenceman who should play 70 games. A 94th-percentile chance share getting 15 minutes a night on a club whose top four is at the 25th, 17th, 38th and 71st is a coaching question rather than a player one.

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
  • 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.

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

    55.7% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 47.0% for his club in the minutes he sat: +8.7, 98th percentile among defencemen

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

  • sheltered· is started in the attacking end

    62% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 97th percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it

  • punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He finishes checks, defends the front of his net, and does not get pushed around.”

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

    “He finishes checks, defends the front of his net, and does not get pushed around.”

  • hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “does not get pushed around”

  • nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point

    “52 penalty minutes over 56 games is a high rate and it is the one thing standing between him and more ice time on a club with a 27th-ranked penalty kill.”

  • transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “The skating is genuinely good and the first pass is quick.”

  • playmakerhe lacks it· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “He does not create and does not need to.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 748 minutes

Expected goals
55.7%
93rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.6%
70th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 27 for, 31 against. Expected: 33.9 and 26.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
49th
Numbers
93rd

The numbers rank him 44 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 — 72 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 · 56 games

Top speed
21.8 mph
58th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6

Bursts over 20 mph
0.27 a game

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

Distance
2.12 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
90.5 mph
47th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 89.7

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 · 748 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
MTL took 48.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.7% — 7.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
748 minutes at five-on-five — 33rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Lane Hutson60.1%52.6%50.4%
Alex Newhook51.3%57.5%48.1%
Nick Suzuki71.4%50.0%47.7%

60.1% together, 52.6% for him apart and 50.4% for Hutson 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

68 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 42 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 81% from beyond forty.