Armchair Hockey Scout

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2023-24 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 2023-24 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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29

Marc-Andre Fleury

Minnesota Wild Goaltender

Nineteen seasons, three Stanley Cups, a Vezina at thirty-six, and a .9078 at thirty-eight.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2003-04PIT214140703.641675.896
2005-06PIT50132761523.2511485.898
2006-07PIT67401691842.8351954.906
2007-08PIT3519102722.334909.921
2008-09PIT62351871622.6741850.912
2009-10PIT67372161682.6511772.905
2010-11PIT65362051432.3231742.918
2011-12PIT67421741532.3631768.913
2012-13PIT332380742.391881.916
2013-14PIT64391851502.3751774.915
2014-15PIT64342091462.32101831.920
2015-16PIT58351761322.2951665.921
2016-17PIT38181071073.0211181.909
2017-18VGK46291341002.2441376.927
2018-19VGK61352151522.5181745.913
2019-20VGK49271651332.7751399.905
2020-21VGK3626100711.986989.928
2021-22CHI/MIN56282351592.9041732.908
2022-23MIN46241641262.8521367.908
2023-24 so far——————————
Career—9855443158924542.587328095.913

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

24-16-4 in 46 games, .9078, 2.85, two shutouts on 1,367 shots.

A .9078 is ordinary and it is his second straight season around .908, after the .9282 that won him the Vezina in 2020-21.

Minnesota’s goaltending value ranked fourth in the league last season and the larger share of it came from the twenty-four-year-old at the other end of the crease. Fleury played the most games; Gustavsson provided the surplus.

Nineteen seasons, and the record is one of the longest in the history of the position: 985 regular-season games in this book, three Stanley Cups, a Vezina, and a first-overall selection in 2003 that no club has regretted.

The Finesse Game

6-2 and 185, and an athletic, reactive style built on a fast glove and a willingness to leave his feet.

He handles the puck as well as any goaltender of his era and is a genuine third defenceman on a breakout, which matters on a club that finished twentieth in shot-attempt share and needs clean exits.

The rebound control has never been the strength and it is less so now. He is thirty-eight, and the second and third chances that a younger version smothered are the ones that go in.

Two shutouts in forty-six games.

The Intangibles

First overall in 2003 out of Cape Breton, twenty-one games in the league at nineteen, and still starting at thirty-eight.

He is the most popular teammate of his generation by every account this book has read, which is a fact it has no metric for and records anyway.

The honest projection is a backup’s workload and a backup’s numbers, on a club where the job has already been taken by the man behind him. What Minnesota is paying for now is thirty starts and the room.

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.

  • puck-handlinga strength· starts the breakout himself

    “He handles the puck as well as any goaltender of his era and is a genuine third defenceman on a breakout, which matters on a club that finished twentieth in shot-attempt share and needs clean exits.”

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

    “The rebound control has never been the strength and it is less so now.”

  • plays-aggressivea strength· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “6-2 and 185, and an athletic, reactive style built on a fast glove and a willingness to leave his feet.”

  • leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it

    “He is the most popular teammate of his generation by every account this book has read, which is a fact it has no metric for and records anyway.”