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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30

Joel Hofer

St. Louis Blues Goaltender

Six-five, a fourth-round pick, and a better save percentage than the starter in his first thirty games.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2021-22STL211063.07050.880
2022-23STL6311173.220179.905
2023-24STL3015121722.651830.913
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—3819142952.7611059.910

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

30 games, 15-12-1 with a .9133 and a 2.65, 1 shutout, facing 830 shots.

The .9133 was marginally better than Jordan Binnington’s, on the same club and the same chances. He had played 8 NHL games in total before this season.

The Physical Game

He is 6-5 and 193.

He is three inches taller and twenty-one pounds heavier than his partner and plays nothing like him: deep, square and patient, taking up net rather than cutting angles down. At that height the top of the net is simply not available and the work is all in the recovery low.

The Mental Game

A career .9103 across 38 games.

Thirty games in a first real season without the save percentage moving is the most encouraging thing a young goaltender can do. He is 24, he was a fourth-round pick, and there is nothing in the record yet to say he cannot be the starter here.

The Intangibles

One hundred and seventh overall in 2018 by St. Louis, three seasons, one organisation, and 38 games.

Nineteen career wins against 14 losses. He and Binnington were worth eighteen goals between them last season, which was the difference between sixteenth place and thirtieth.

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

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 is three inches taller and twenty-one pounds heavier than his partner and plays nothing like him: deep, square and patient, taking up net rather than cutting angles down.”

  • tracks-traffica strength· finds it through a screen

    “At that height the top of the net is simply not available and the work is all in the recovery low.”