Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.

John Carlson

Photo by Michael Miller, CC BY-SA 3.0

John Carlson

Tampa Bay Lightning Defense #74

1,159 games, and 60 points at 36.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2009-10WSH22156+118000214.815:15
2010-11WSH8273037+21441031444.922:39
2011-12WSH8292332-15224001525.921:52
2012-13WSH4861622+1118000976.223:01
2013-14WSH82102737-3225002084.824:31
2014-15WSH82124355+11283131936.223:04
2015-16WSH5683139+16142041246.523:42
2016-17WSH7292837+7103031805.022:43
2017-18WSH821553680324042376.324:47
2018-19WSH80135770+21343011857.025:04
2019-20WSH69156075+12262061897.924:38
2020-21WSH52103444-5123011287.823:47
2021-22WSH78175471+13207021958.723:49
2022-23WSH4092029-7123101247.323:23
2023-24WSH82104252-7406051765.725:54
2024-25WSH7954651+17221001673.023:34
2025-26WSH/ANA71144660+9322011539.223:10
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—1159170615785+1123964923326736.423:36

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

14 goals and 46 assists in 71 games — 60 points, plus-9, at 23:10 a night. His 5-on-5 work was done in Washington.

His 1,159th career game and his 785th point. 615 career assists.

The Finesse Game

The shot from the point is still one of the heaviest in the league and it is still the reason he runs a power play. 237 unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet, 62 per cent from beyond 40, and 14 goals — an excellent conversion for a defenceman.

46 assists at 36 is a top-5 figure among defencemen and the eleventh season he has cleared 40.

The Physical Game

6-3, 220, and he has never defended by force. 32 penalty minutes.

The skating has slowed and the gap control was never the strength. He defends by having the puck, and at 23 minutes a night that is a bet the club has to keep making.

The Intangibles

54.2 per cent of the expected goals, 83rd percentile, and 54.6 per cent of the shot attempts, 89th, across 1,220 minutes in Washington.

Those are genuinely strong figures, and they came on a club whose goaltending finished 29 goals better than the chances it faced — the best in the league — so the plus-9 understates rather than flatters him.

He is 36, a Stanley Cup and a Norris into an 18-year career, all of it in Washington until now. Tampa is replacing Raddysh and half a blue line with a man who scored 60 points; that is not a rebuild move.

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

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.

  • hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range

    8 of 148 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 5.4%, 96th percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it

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

    54.2% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.9% for his club in the minutes he sat: +5.3, 94th percentile among defencemen

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

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,220 minutes

Expected goals
54.2%
83rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
54.6%
89th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 65 for, 51 against. Expected: 61.8 and 52.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
73rd
Numbers
83rd

The two rank him within 10 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

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 — 76 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 · 71 games

Top speed
22.5 mph
84th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.45 a game

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

Distance
3.09 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
99.8 mph
96th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 88.9

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

10

points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 6 assists, 28 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with WSH · 926 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 54.2% — 3.6 above the club he did it on.
The role
1,220 minutes at five-on-five — 83rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Martin Fehervary53.2%54.8%45.9%
Aliaksei Protas50.3%55.5%50.8%
Anthony Beauvillier52.9%54.6%46.7%

53.2% together, 54.8% for him apart and 45.9% for Fehervary apart. Fehervary was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Fehervary 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

237 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 14 of them goals. His median goal came from 41 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 62% from beyond forty.