Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

83

Mason McTavish

Anaheim Ducks Center

Nineteen goals and eighty-six penalty minutes at twenty-one — the hardest young forward on this roster to play against.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22ANA9213+320011216.713:05
2022-23ANA80172643-194470116110.615:22
2023-24ANA64192342-238641313014.616:17
2024-25 so far
Career153385088-39132111530312.515:37

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

19 goals and 23 assists in 64 games — 42 points at 16:17 a night, minus-23, with 4 power-play goals, 1 shorthanded goal and 3 game-winners on 130 shots, converting at 14.62 per cent, and 86 penalty minutes.

46.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 868 minutes, the 27th percentile. His ice went 33-38 against an expectation of 33.63-38.51 — almost exactly what the chances said, which on this club is unusual.

The Finesse Game

130 attempts at a median of 24 feet, with 42 per cent from inside 20 and 16 per cent from beyond 40, converting at 14.62 per cent. He shoots from where goals are scored and he does not waste attempts from the boards.

He goes to the net and he arrives before the puck does. The hands in tight are good and the release is heavy for a 21-year-old.

23 assists. He will make the pass but he is a scorer first and the club is right to use him that way.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 219, and he is the hardest of the young forwards here to play against. He finishes checks, he wins pucks below the goal line, and he does not step out of a scrum.

86 penalty minutes in 64 games at 21 and 132 in 153 career games. Some of that is the edge and some of it is a young centre answering a cross-check he should have let go. He retaliates, and on a club that spent 6:08 a game shorthanded that is not free.

The Intangibles

Third overall in 2021, and 153 games and 88 points before his twenty-second birthday.

He captained Canada to a world junior gold and scored the goal that won it. This is a player whose compete is the loudest thing about him — on a club losing fifty games, the twenty-one-year-old was the one still finishing checks in March.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 868 minutes

Expected goals
46.6%
28th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
45.8%
21st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 33 for, 38 against. Expected: 33.6 and 38.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
91st
Numbers
28th

The report ranks him 63 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 41 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 76 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 868 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, 2023-24

The club
ANA took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.6% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 868 minutes at five-on-five — 45th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Frank Vatrano44.8%50.8%43.9%
Ryan Strome45.3%47.8%44.6%
Cam Fowler47.4%46.2%45.7%

44.8% together, 50.8% for him apart and 43.9% for Vatrano apart. He was better away from Vatrano, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Vatrano.

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

185 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 19 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.