Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 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 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

25

Jeffrey Viel

Tampa Bay Lightning Left Wing

Undrafted, 99 games, and 79 penalty minutes in 45.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21SJS11000-723000100.07:16
2021-22SJS34325-21140003010.08:48
2022-23SJS40000200040.09:10
2024-25BOS5000-11400030.07:41
2025-26BOS/ANA453710-379000624.811:55
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—996915-132320001095.510:00

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

3 goals and 7 assists in 45 games — 10 points, minus-3, at 11:55 a night with 79 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Boston.

The Finesse Game

97 unblocked attempts, 3 goals, median 18 feet with 53 per cent from inside 20 — the location is right and almost nothing comes of it.

15 points in 99 career games. 7 assists in 45 games is the honest rate.

The Physical Game

6-1, 214, and thick. 79 penalty minutes in 12 minutes a night is 1.76 per game, the fourth-highest rate of anybody who dressed 40 times.

He fights, he forechecks heavily, and he protects teammates. That is the job and he has built a career out of being willing to do it after going undrafted.

The Intangibles

52.6 per cent of the expected goals, 74th percentile, and 53.6 per cent of the shot attempts, 84th, across 520 minutes in Boston, with the goals 22-26 against.

Those are genuinely good numbers for a fourth-line enforcer and they are the best case anybody has made for him.

He is 29, and joins a club that already has Sabourin for this role. Only one of them dresses.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 520 minutes

Expected goals
52.6%
75th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.6%
84th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 26 against. Expected: 26.7 and 24.1.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
27th
Numbers
75th

The numbers rank him 48 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 68 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, 2025-26 · 45 games

Top speed
22.8 mph
77th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.16 a game

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

Distance
1.84 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
82.8 mph
35th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

4

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 3 assists, 20 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 with ANA · 426 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, 2025-26

The club
ANA took 50.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.6% — 2.0 above the club he did it on.
The role
520 minutes at five-on-five — 18th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Ryan Poehling51.3%53.8%46.5%
Cutter Gauthier52.0%52.9%51.1%
Jacob Trouba44.7%57.0%50.6%

51.3% together, 53.8% for him apart and 46.5% for Poehling apart. Poehling was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Poehling than for him.

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

97 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 7 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.