Armchair Hockey Scout

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2024-25 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 2024-25 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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15

Justin Danforth

Columbus Blue Jackets Right Wing

Undrafted, five foot eight, and fifty-six per cent of his shots from inside twenty feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22CBJ4510414-5100017213.912:34
2022-23CBJ6213-340001020.013:23
2023-24CBJ71101626-10260018611.614:16
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—122222143-184000216813.113:36

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

10 goals and 16 assists in 71 games — 26 points at 14:16 a night, minus-10, with 1 game-winner on 86 shots, converting at 11.63 per cent, and 26 penalty minutes. A career high in every column.

46.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 870 minutes, the 30th percentile. His ice went 39-49 against an expectation of 34.59-39.66.

The Finesse Game

86 attempts at a median of 16 feet, with 56 per cent from inside 20 and 8 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 11.63 per cent.

At 5-8 and 193 pounds he shoots almost entirely from the paint, which requires a willingness most players that size do not have and is the reason he has an NHL career at all.

16 assists. He moves the puck quickly and the hockey sense is well ahead of the tools.

The Physical Game

5-8 and 193, and he is one of the smallest forwards in this edition. He cannot win a puck on the wall against a defenceman and he is moved off the front of the net at will, and he goes back to both.

26 penalty minutes in 71 games and 40 in 122 for his career is a low rate. He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Sacred Heart, with four seasons in Finland and Russia before he ever played an NHL game, and 122 NHL games and 43 points at 31.

A 5-8 undrafted forward who reaches the NHL at 28 and holds a top-nine job at 31 has done something almost nobody does, and on a roster of nine top-ten picks he is a useful corrective.

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

    72.5% of his attempts in the slot, 99th percentile among forwards

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

  • undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached

    “**Undrafted**, out of Sacred Heart, with four seasons in Finland and Russia before he ever played an NHL game, and **122 NHL games and 43 points at 31.**”

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

    “**At 5-8 and 193 pounds he shoots almost entirely from the paint**, which requires a willingness most players that size do not have and is the reason he has an NHL career at all.”

  • wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line

    “**He cannot win a puck on the wall against a defenceman and he is moved off the front of the net at will**, and he goes back to both.”

  • hard-to-movehe lacks it· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “**5-8 and 193, and he is one of the smallest forwards in this edition.**”

  • agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation

    “He does not agitate and he does not retaliate.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 870 minutes

Expected goals
46.6%
30th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.5%
31st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 49 against. Expected: 34.6 and 39.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
35th
Numbers
30th

The two rank him within 5 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 652 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.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 71 games

Top speed
22.9 mph
86th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
2.97 a game

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

Distance
2.26 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
83.4 mph
29th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

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

2023-24 · 870 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
CBJ took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.6% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
870 minutes at five-on-five — 46th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Sean Kuraly49.5%44.4%37.6%
Ivan Provorov47.8%45.9%44.7%
Erik Gudbranson42.8%48.3%43.4%

49.5% together, 44.4% for him apart and 37.6% for Kuraly 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

138 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 56% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.