Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 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 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

Kyle Palmieri

Photo by TheAHL, CC BY 2.0

Kyle Palmieri

New York Islanders Center #21

925 games, and a median shot from 15 feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2010-11ANA10101-100001010.08:41
2011-12ANA18437+360003411.811:31
2012-13ANA42101121+292059210.912:20
2013-14ANA71141731+9380041479.511:57
2014-15ANA57141529-23750411212.514:06
2015-16NJD82302757+339110422213.517:48
2016-17NJD80262753+24681319213.517:21
2017-18NJD62242044-130110518113.317:19
2018-19NJD74272350-942110222412.018:09
2019-20NJD65252045-441110315516.117:07
2020-21NJD/NYI51101121-5202121158.716:35
2021-22NYI691518330572061569.615:37
2022-23NYI55161733+132430312213.117:06
2023-24NYI82302454-1626100821813.817:13
2024-25NYI82242448-172050216914.218:31
2025-26NYI2561218-28111718.518:53
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—925276269545-2544382352222012.416:20

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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 25 games — 18 points, minus-2, at 18:53 a night. 57 games missed.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is one of the best in this book. 57 per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside 20 feet, median 15, with only 6 per cent from beyond 40.

276 goals in 925 career games, and at 35 he has done what the good ones do: stopped shooting from the outside entirely and moved into the paint.

12 assists in 25 games is a strong rate too.

The Physical Game

6 foot even, 192, and he takes the punishment that comes with standing where he stands. 8 penalty minutes in 25 games.

The 57 games missed are the whole concern, and at his age that is not a one-off.

The Intangibles

45.6 per cent of the expected goals, 19th percentile, in only 325 minutes — a small and unflattering sample.

8 points in his last 10, 3 of them goals, which is the run of a man who is still a finisher when he is upright.

He is 35, a 26th overall pick, and 545 points into a career spent almost entirely in the same 2 states. The shot chart says he can still play. The games-played column is the argument against.

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

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

    67.3% of his attempts in the slot, 92nd percentile among forwards

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

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 325 minutes

Expected goals
45.6%
19th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.4%
51st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 10 for, 10 against. Expected: 12.0 and 14.3.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
61st
Numbers
19th
Blind
49th

The report ranks him 42 points above where the numbers do. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

The same player was graded a second time from his biography and his box score alone, with the measured record withheld. That reading lands 30 points from the numbers; this one lands 42. Across the whole control the two distances come out the same, which is worth knowing in both directions: the arithmetic on both sides of the sighted reading did not buy it any accuracy, and it did not cost it any either.

All three bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 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, 2025-26 · 25 games

Top speed
22.3 mph
55th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.92 a game

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

Distance
2.77 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
89.4 mph
80th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

8

points in his last 10 games — 3 goals, 5 assists, 27 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 325 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, 2025-26

The club
NYI took 48.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.6% — 2.8 below the club he did it on.
The role
325 minutes at five-on-five — 7th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Bo Horvat50.4%41.9%50.7%
Mathew Barzal44.5%46.5%52.1%
Emil Heineman45.2%45.9%48.9%

50.4% together, 41.9% for him apart and 50.7% for Horvat apart. He was worse away from Horvat, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Horvat did.

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

101 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 14 feet. 58% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.