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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21

Kaiden Guhle

Montreal Canadiens Defense

55 games at 21:11 a night, and a shutdown defenceman who cannot stay on the ice.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23MTL4441418-1927000488.320:31
2023-24MTL7061622-856001956.320:51
2024-25MTL5561218+647001718.521:11
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—169164258-211300022147.520:52

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

6 goals and 12 assists in 55 games for 18 points, plus-6, on 21:11 a night.

48.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 43rd percentile, over 941 minutes. 74 per cent of his shots came from beyond 40 feet and 3 per cent from inside 20. 55 games is the third consecutive season interrupted by injury.

The Finesse Game

Modest and appropriate. 71 shots and 6 goals, and 12 assists in 55 games at 21 minutes a night is a low return.

The first pass is quick and safe and he does not stall a breakout. There is no offensive projection and none required.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 202, and he defends properly. He closes a rush at the blue line, clears his crease, and is genuinely difficult to get around — the tools for a shutdown defenceman are all here.

47 penalty minutes over 55 games is a high rate. The availability is the problem: he has not cleared 65 games in three NHL seasons.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, a junior captain, and a defenceman the club needs to be its defensive conscience on a blue line whose two best players are offensive.

At 23 the projection is a genuine top-four shutdown defenceman. The body has to hold up first and it has not yet.

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

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.

  • hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range

    4 of 85 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.7%, 93rd percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it

  • clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net

    “He closes a rush at the blue line, clears his crease, and is genuinely difficult to get around — the tools for a shutdown defenceman are all here.”

  • defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens

    “He closes a rush at the blue line, clears his crease, and is genuinely difficult to get around — the tools for a shutdown defenceman are all here.”

  • defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead

    “6-3 and 202, and he defends properly.”

  • transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “The first pass is quick and safe and he does not stall a breakout.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 941 minutes

Expected goals
48.9%
44th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.1%
26th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 41 for, 43 against. Expected: 38.7 and 40.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
66th
Numbers
44th

The report ranks him 22 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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 · 55 games

Top speed
22.4 mph
77th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6

Bursts over 20 mph
1.00 a game

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

Distance
2.91 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
93.4 mph
71st pct

one shot; the league's average best is 89.7

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 · 941 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
MTL took 48.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.9% — 0.3 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 941 minutes at five-on-five — 52nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Alexandre Carrier52.5%47.2%43.3%
Nick Suzuki48.5%49.1%52.2%
Cole Caufield47.6%49.5%50.7%

52.5% together, 47.2% for him apart and 43.3% for Carrier 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

115 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 47 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.