Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

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.

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

29

Justus Annunen

Nashville Predators Goaltender

Acquired from Colorado in December, .8833 across 34 games between the two clubs, and 6-4 in a crease where Juuse Saros is 5-11.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2021-22COL210174.34051.863
2022-23COL211073.58048.854
2023-24COL14841302.252414.927
2024-25COL/NSH3415151953.180814.883
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—52252031392.9721327.895

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

34 games between Colorado and Nashville, 15-15-1, a .8833 save percentage and a 3.18 goals-against average, on 814 shots faced. No shutouts. He came to Nashville in December for Scott Wedgewood.

.8833 is a poor number in any context. It was posted behind two very different clubs, and neither of them defended badly enough to explain it away.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 210, and he plays large and deep, taking away the top of the net by occupying it — the exact opposite of the man he backs up. Square more often than not, economical, and he does not travel further than the puck requires him to.

The lateral quickness is the limitation and it is a real one: a puck moved across the slot finds him late, and the second save in a sequence is where the goals come from. The rebound control is the other item — pucks come off him further into the slot than they should, and on a club conceding this many interior chances that compounds quickly.

The Mental Game

Two organisations in one season, 34 games, and the same poor number at both. He did not play badly enough in Colorado to deserve being traded, and he did not play well enough in Nashville to take a job that was there for the taking — a difficult position for a 25-year-old to be left holding.

He does not appear rattled by volume. There is not enough evidence to say much more than that.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2018 who spent five years in the American League, with one genuinely good stretch in Colorado before this.

He is 25 and cheap and he is the only other goaltender under contract on a club whose starter is signed for eight more years. The number that matters is not last season’s .8833 — it is whether a goaltender with this technical base can hold a 30-game share. Nashville is going to find out, because there is no alternative on the roster.

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.

  • 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.

  • plays-deepa strength· takes the net away by occupying it

    “6-4 and 210, and he plays large and deep, taking away the top of the net by occupying it — the exact opposite of the man he backs up.”

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

    “The lateral quickness is the limitation and it is a real one: a puck moved across the slot finds him late, and the second save in a sequence is where the goals come from.”

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is the other item — pucks come off him further into the slot than they should, and on a club conceding this many interior chances that compounds quickly.”