This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Karel Vejmelka
Utah Mammoth Goaltender
A .9039 across 58 games and 1,509 shots, the best season of his career by a distance.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | ARI | 52 | 13 | 32 | 3 | 170 | 3.68 | 1 | 1669 | .898 |
| 2022-23 | ARI | 50 | 18 | 24 | 6 | 168 | 3.43 | 3 | 1670 | .899 |
| 2023-24 | ARI | 38 | 13 | 19 | 2 | 114 | 3.35 | 1 | 1089 | .895 |
| 2024-25 | UTA | 58 | 26 | 22 | 8 | 145 | 2.58 | 1 | 1509 | .904 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 198 | 70 | 97 | 19 | 597 | 3.22 | 6 | 5937 | .899 |
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
26-22-8 in 58 games with a .9039, a 2.58 average and 1 shutout, facing 1,509 shots.
The club’s goaltending came in 2.9 goals better than the chances faced, 16th in the league — league-average, and given a career .8994 across 198 games it is comfortably the best season he has had.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 221 and he plays deep and large. He sets at the top of the crease, he is square almost without exception, and the frame takes the top of the net away without him having to move for it.
The rebound control is decent and the lateral recovery is the limitation — a second chance from the far post is a long way for him. The glove is solid. He handles the puck adequately and does not start breakouts with it.
The Mental Game
He posted an .8867 and an .8951 in his first two NHL seasons behind clubs that conceded enormously, and there was very little reason to think he would ever be a starter.
Fifty-eight starts and a .9039 on a club that was 13th at suppressing chances is the first evidence anybody has that he can be. He is 29 and it is late to be finding out.
The Intangibles
A fifth-round pick of Nashville in 2015 who never signed there and came from the Czech league at 25 — 198 games with a career .8994.
He is 29 and signed an extension in 2025. Connor Ingram was traded to Edmonton and Vitek Vanecek was signed, which leaves the job unambiguously his.
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
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
- 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.
“He sets at the top of the crease, he is square almost without exception, and the frame takes the top of the net away without him having to move for it.”
“The rebound control is decent and the lateral recovery is the limitation — a second chance from the far post is a long way for him.”
“The rebound control is decent and the lateral recovery is the limitation — a second chance from the far post is a long way for him.”
“He handles the puck adequately and does not start breakouts with it.”