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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36

John Gibson

Detroit Red Wings Goaltender

A .9112 in 29 games, and the first time in six years he has been above league average.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2013-14ANA330041.33187.954
2014-15ANA231380582.601674.914
2015-16ANA4021134792.074992.920
2016-17ANA52251691092.2261437.924
2017-18ANA60311871392.4341872.926
2018-19ANA58262281532.8421838.917
2019-20ANA51202651493.0011552.904
2020-21ANA3591971012.9831042.903
2021-22ANA561826111723.1911789.904
2022-23ANA53143182003.9911983.899
2023-24ANA46132721513.5401343.888
2024-25ANA2911112722.770811.911
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—5062042176313872.892415420.910

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

11-11-2 in 29 games, .9112 with a 2.77 average on 811 shots with Anaheim.

His best save percentage in six seasons, in the fewest games he has played since arriving in the league, on the worst defensive club in hockey. Read against Anaheim’s defence — dead last in expected goals against — a .9112 is a considerably better number than it appears.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 209, and the game is athletic and reflex-driven. The glove has always been the standout tool and it still is; he beats pucks with reaction rather than by being in position early.

The rebound control is ordinary and the depth in the crease varies. What has thinned is the ability to make a second and third save in a sequence, which was once the best part of him and is the specific thing that eleven seasons of 35 shots a night takes away.

The Mental Game

Twelve seasons on one club, most of them bad, and a long stretch of being the most under-appreciated goaltender in the league followed by a longer one of being told he was finished.

He has never publicly complained and has never stopped competing. Whether that is worth anything at 32 after the seasons he has absorbed is a fair question.

The Intangibles

Traded at 32 for a backup and a mid-round pick, which is roughly what the market thought of him.

Detroit needed a second goaltender it could trust behind a 37-year-old. This is a sensible version of that, and there is a real chance that a goaltender who has spent a decade facing 35 shots a night looks considerably better behind a club that is only 21st at conceding them.

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.

  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
  • 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.

  • rebound-controlpresent and ordinary· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is ordinary and the depth in the crease varies.”

  • plays-deephe lacks it· takes the net away by occupying it

    “The rebound control is ordinary and the depth in the crease varies.”

  • lateral-recoveryhe lacks it· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “What has thinned is the ability to make a second and third save in a sequence, which was once the best part of him and is the specific thing that eleven seasons of 35 shots a night takes away.”