Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

17

Josh Anderson

Montreal Canadiens Right Wing

Nine goals in 78 games at 6-3 and 226, on the eleventh percentile of chances.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2014-15CBJ6011-12000100.013:27
2015-16CBJ1213402000119.110:42
2016-17CBJ78171229+128900311914.312:01
2017-18CBJ63191130-14210518810.118:02
2018-19CBJ82272047+256032523011.717:01
2019-20CBJ26134-817000631.616:04
2020-21MTL5217724-103811512513.616:25
2021-22MTL69191332-256520115112.617:14
2022-23MTL69211132-87241516412.816:58
2023-24MTL7891120-18740001416.415:28
2024-25 so far
Career53513192223-3446111424120210.915:55

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

78 games, 9 goals and 11 assists for 20 points, 74 penalty minutes, 15:28 a night and minus-18. He took 43.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,041 minutes, the 11th percentile, and his ice went 36-46 against an expectation of 38.78-51.45.

Three goals of scoring that did not arrive and five fewer conceded than the chances called for. The 11th percentile is the worst chance share of any regular forward on the roster and the twenty points are the worst return.

The Finesse Game

218 attempts at a median of 22 feet with 44 per cent from inside 20, 141 of them on goal, converted at 6.4 per cent against a career 10.90.

92 career assists in 535 games. He gets to the right ice and cannot finish from it — nine goals on that shot chart is six or seven short of the rate he has produced for a decade. There is no playmaking to speak of.

The Physical Game

He hits as hard as anybody in the league at 6-3 and 226 and skates faster than a man that size has any right to.

461 career penalty minutes in 535 games is a real rate. He forechecks aggressively, wins the wall, clears the crease, and will fight anybody who asks.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick in 2012 out of Burlington, Ontario, ten seasons across two organisations, and 223 points in 535 games.

He is 30 and had by a distance the worst season of his career. Two years before it he scored 21 goals; the club is paying for that man and got this one.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,041 minutes

Expected goals
43%
11th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43.2%
9th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 36 for, 46 against. Expected: 38.8 and 51.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
53rd
Numbers
11th

The report ranks him 42 points above where the numbers do. 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. 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 415 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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

2023-24 · 1041 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, 2023-24

The club
MTL took 46.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.0% — 3.1 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 1,041 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jake Evans46.3%39.6%43.6%
Mike Matheson43.2%42.9%44.9%
David Savard44.5%42.4%45.4%

46.3% together, 39.6% for him apart and 43.6% for Evans apart. He was worse away from Evans, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Evans did.

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

218 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 44% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.