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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16

Justin Brazeau

Pittsburgh Penguins Right Wing

Six-foot-six and 232 pounds, undrafted, and an NHL regular for the first time at 27.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2023-24BOS19527+422013116.111:07
2024-25BOS/MIN76111122-9184038912.411:52
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—95161329-52060412013.311:43

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 goals and 11 assists in 76 games across Boston and Minnesota — 22 points at 11:52 a night, with 4 power-play goals and 3 game-winners on 89 shots.

Eleven goals from a fourth-line winger at under twelve minutes a night is a good return, and four of them on the power play says he was used in front of the net there for a reason.

The Finesse Game

89 attempts and 11 goals at a 12.4 per cent conversion. The shot is a genuine one and the release from the top of the crease is quick for a man this size.

11 assists in 76 games. There is no creation and there does not need to be; he is a net-front body who converts what deflects off him and what lands at his feet.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 232 pounds and among the largest men in the league. He cannot be moved from the front of a net, he wins pucks on the wall by leaning on people, and he forechecks by arriving late and heavily.

18 penalty minutes in 76 games is a low rate for a man that size. He is not nasty and he does not take liberties, which is either restraint or a limitation depending on the night.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, and he played four full seasons in the American League and the ECHL before an NHL game — 95 of them now, starting at 26.

He is 27 and Pittsburgh signed him in the summer. On a club whose power play is 5th in the league and has no net-front presence under 32, the fit is obvious.

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
  • a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
  • 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.

  • slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored

    67.2% of his attempts in the slot, 95th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it

  • undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached

    “**Undrafted**, and he played four full seasons in the American League and the ECHL before an NHL game — 95 of them now, starting at 26.”

  • net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips

    “He cannot be moved from the front of a net, he wins pucks on the wall by leaning on people, and he forechecks by arriving late and heavily.”

  • hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “He cannot be moved from the front of a net, he wins pucks on the wall by leaning on people, and he forechecks by arriving late and heavily.”

  • wins-the-walla strength· the corners and below the goal line

    “He cannot be moved from the front of a net, he wins pucks on the wall by leaning on people, and he forechecks by arriving late and heavily.”

  • takes-libertieshe lacks it· crosses the line and knows where it is

    “He is not nasty and he does not take liberties, which is either restraint or a limitation depending on the night.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 805 minutes

Expected goals
48.9%
44th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.7%
31st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 22 for, 25 against. Expected: 29.5 and 30.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
21st
Numbers
44th

The numbers rank him 23 points above where the report does. 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2024-25 · 76 games

Top speed
21.3 mph
14th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
0.47 a game

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

Distance
1.82 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
79.9 mph
19th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.9

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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with BOS · 662 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, 2024-25

The club
MIN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.9% — 0.2 below the club he did it on.
The role
805 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Trent Frederic47.2%49.6%49.8%
Nikita Zadorov55.2%46.3%47.7%
Brandon Carlo43.3%50.8%47.0%

47.2% together, 49.6% for him apart and 49.8% for Frederic apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

128 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 62% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 14% from beyond forty.