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.

Martin Fehérváry

Photo by All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0

Martin Fehérváry

Washington Capitals Defense #42

380 games, 27 goals, and 67 goals for.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20WSH6011-2600070.015:59
2021-22WSH798917+1526012968.319:39
2022-23WSH6761016-1131001916.620:00
2023-24WSH6631316-724000614.919:38
2024-25WSH8152025+1825000766.619:00
2025-26WSH8152227+1539000736.919:17
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—3802775102+281510134046.719:26

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

5 goals and 22 assists in 81 games — 27 points, plus-15, at 19:17 a night with 39 penalty minutes.

His 380th career game.

The Finesse Game

98 unblocked attempts from a median of 45 feet, 61 per cent from beyond 40, 5 goals. 27 goals in 380 career games.

22 assists is a career high and a fair return for a defenceman whose job is the retrieval and the first pass.

The Physical Game

6-2, 215, and genuinely physical — he finishes checks hard, defends his crease, and blocks a great many shots. 39 penalty minutes.

The skating is good for the size and it is why he can take 19 minutes against top lines.

The Intangibles

48.9 per cent of the expected goals, 45th percentile, and 47.1 per cent of the shot attempts, 27th, across 1,291 minutes, with the chances 55.3 to 57.7 against.

The goals came out 54 for and 48 against — a 6-goal margin on chances that were 2 the wrong way, so 9 better than predicted, which is the sort of gap Thompson handed out all season, though Chychrun’s 35 is the one that tells the story.

6 points in his last 10. He is 26, a second-round pick, and a solid, unspectacular second-pair defenceman whose plus-15 is worth about half what it looks like.

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

    20.4% of his attempts in the slot, 95th percentile among defencemen

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

  • durable· was available

    81 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

  • hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best

    36% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 2nd percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,291 minutes

Expected goals
48.9%
45th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.1%
28th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 54 for, 48 against. Expected: 55.3 and 57.7.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
55th
Numbers
45th

The two rank him within 10 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both 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 — 73 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 · 81 games

Top speed
22.4 mph
78th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.68 a game

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

Distance
2.50 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
92.7 mph
63rd pct

one shot; the league's average best is 88.9

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

6

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 5 assists, 10 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1291 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
WSH took 49.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.9% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,291 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
John Carlson53.2%45.9%54.8%
Aliaksei Protas46.5%50.2%53.1%
Anthony Beauvillier51.1%48.0%46.9%

53.2% together, 45.9% for him apart and 54.8% for Carlson apart. He was worse away from Carlson, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Carlson 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

98 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 39 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 61% from beyond forty.