Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

17

John Beecher

Boston Bruins Center

11 points in 78 games, and a fourth-line centre who has not yet shown why he was a first-round pick.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2023-24BOS527310-6240013818.410:37
2024-25BOS783811-926000446.811:17
2025-26 so far
Career130101121-15500018212.211:01

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

3 goals and 8 assists in 78 games for 11 points, minus-9, on 11:17 a night.

47.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 26th percentile, which is roughly the club average and therefore not a criticism. 44 shots in 78 games is.

The Finesse Game

The skating is genuinely good for a man of this size — long strides, real straight-line speed, and the ability to forecheck a defenceman into a bad decision.

Everything else is thin. 3 goals in 78 games, 8 assists, and no evidence in two NHL seasons of a shot or a passing game arriving. He was a 30th overall pick on the strength of the skating and the frame, and only the skating has translated.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 220, and he uses it on the forecheck rather than in front of either net. He arrives with weight and he is difficult to handle at speed, and he does not win many battles once the play stops.

26 penalty minutes over 78 games. Disciplined.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, four years at Michigan, and two NHL seasons as a fourth-line centre with no sign of more.

At 24 this is close to the answer. He is a useful penalty killer with real speed, and a club that finished 27th in chance creation cannot keep giving 11 minutes a night to a forward who produces 11 points.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 737 minutes

Expected goals
47.4%
27th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43.7%
7th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 27 for, 32 against. Expected: 23.0 and 25.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
20th
Numbers
27th

The two rank him within 7 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 315 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 737 minutes at five-on-five

  • Cole Koepkenow WPG51%
  • Patrick Brownoff the roster15%

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
BOS took 48.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.4% — 1.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 737 minutes at five-on-five — 32nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Mark Kastelic50.9%43.3%36.9%
Cole Koepke55.5%39.8%42.0%
Nikita Zadorov46.2%48.3%49.9%

50.9% together, 43.3% for him apart and 36.9% for Kastelic 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

73 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 56 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.