Armchair Hockey Scout

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2024-25 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 2024-25 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

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

63

Matias Maccelli

Utah Hockey Club Left Wing

Forty assists in all 82 games, on eight penalty minutes.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22ARI23156-104000214.814:12
2022-23ARI641138490181016118.015:41
2023-24ARI82174057-4820214911.416:14
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—1692983112-143030323112.615:45

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

82 games, 17 goals and 40 assists for 57 points, 2 on the power play, 8 penalty minutes, 16:14 a night and minus-4, with 2 game-winners. He took 51.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,126 minutes, the 61st percentile, and his ice went 51-40 against an expectation of 49.02-47.04.

Two goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and seven goals of goaltending above them. Fifty-seven points in his third season is a career high by eight.

The Finesse Game

201 attempts at a median of 31 feet with 30 per cent of them from inside twenty and 25 per cent from beyond forty, 147 of those on goal, converted at 11.4 per cent against a career 12.55 across 231 shots.

Eighty-three career assists against 29 goals in 169 games. The ratio is nearly three to one and it has been that way since he arrived; he holds the puck on the wall until the second man arrives and then throws it into the slot.

The Physical Game

He is 5-11 and 187 and took 8 penalty minutes in all 82 games.

Thirty career penalty minutes in 169 games. He is small and does not use what weight he has; the puck is protected with position and edges rather than with the body, and he gives up the wall when a defenceman commits to him.

The Intangibles

Ninety-eighth overall in 2019 by Arizona, three seasons, one organisation, and 112 points in 169 games.

A career minus-14 in 169 games. He is 23, he was a fourth-round pick, and he has 83 assists against 29 goals in his first 169 NHL games.

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
  • 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.

  • disciplined· stays out of the box

    0.10 penalty minutes a game over 82, 3rd percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

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

  • playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “The ratio is nearly three to one and it has been that way since he arrived; he holds the puck on the wall until the second man arrives and then throws it into the slot.”

  • wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line

    “He is small and does not use what weight he has; the puck is protected with position and edges rather than with the body, and he gives up the wall when a defenceman commits to him.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,126 minutes

Expected goals
51%
61st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.6%
42nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 40 against. Expected: 49.0 and 47.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
72nd
Numbers
61st

The two rank him within 11 points of one another. 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.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 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, 2023-24 · 82 games

Top speed
22.2 mph
50th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
1.10 a game

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

Distance
2.57 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
91.7 mph
80th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with ARI · 1126 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
ARI took 48.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.0% — 2.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,126 minutes at five-on-five — 76th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nick Bjugstad53.4%47.7%41.0%
Lawson Crouse53.1%48.3%45.1%
J.J. Moser50.4%51.4%50.1%

53.4% together, 47.7% for him apart and 41.0% for Bjugstad apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

201 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 17 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 30% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 25% from beyond forty.