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.
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50

Marcus Hogberg

New York Islanders Goaltender

Six foot five and 232 pounds, a .8776 across 15 games, and the third goaltender on a club with two.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2018-19OTT4021144.090121.884
2019-20OTT24588703.120728.904
2020-21OTT14470403.740322.876
2024-25NYI15263413.380335.878
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—571123121653.3901506.890

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

15 games, 2-6-3, a .8776 save percentage and a 3.38 goals-against average, on 335 shots faced. No shutouts.

A poor number across a small sample, arriving in relief on a club fighting for a playoff place. He was the third option and he was asked to play more than a third option should be.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 232 pounds, and he takes away the top of the net simply by standing in it. The size is the attribute and everything else is built to preserve it — he stays deep, he does not overcommit, and he lets the puck come to him.

The lateral quickness is the limitation and it is the reason a career has not materialised. A puck moved across the slot finds him late, and the recovery to the second save is slow. The rebounds come off him a long way.

The Mental Game

Three NHL seasons split across five years, with two long spells in Sweden in between, and no run of games anywhere long enough to judge him from.

He does not appear rattled and there is not enough evidence to say more. Fifteen appearances in a season is a goaltender being used, not evaluated.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2013 who went home to Sweden at 26, won a league title there, and came back at 29.

He is 30 and he is depth. On a club whose starter faced 1,695 shots, the third goaltender is not a hypothetical position — it was needed for fifteen games last season and the number it returned was .8776.

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

    “he stays deep, he does not overcommit, and he lets the puck come to him.”

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

    “A puck moved across the slot finds him late, and the recovery to the second save is slow.”

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

    “The rebounds come off him a long way.”