Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

73

Matt Rempe

New York Rangers Center

6-9 and 261 with 67 penalty minutes in 42 games at eight and a half minutes a night.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2023-24NYR17112+171001128.35:38
2024-25NYR42358+7670003010.08:30
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—594610+8138001429.57:40

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

3 goals and 5 assists in 42 games — 8 points, plus-7, at 8:30 a night with 67 penalty minutes.

44.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 7th percentile, across 311 minutes. That is the lowest chance share on the roster and it comes attached to the smallest assignment on it, which is the arrangement both parties intended.

The Finesse Game

62 per cent of his attempts came from inside 20 feet at a median of 16 feet, which is the correct plan, and 30 attempts in 42 games is the volume, which is not much of one.

10 points in 59 career games. The hands work at a standstill in front of the net and nowhere else, and a puck arriving at speed is usually gone before he has settled it.

The Physical Game

6-9 and 261 pounds — the largest man in this edition — and this is the entire report. He fights, he hits everything, and 138 penalty minutes in 59 career games is a rate almost nobody in the modern league carries.

He takes liberties and he knows exactly where the line is, which is a skill and also the thing that gets a fourth line sat down. The skating has improved and it is still the reason he is a fourth-line winger rather than a fourth-line centre.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick who became a genuine phenomenon in this building in his first season and has 59 NHL games at 23.

The honest read is a heavyweight in a league that has almost stopped carrying them, whose value is entirely situational and whose ice time depends on a coach who wants the option. There is no projection here beyond that, and the club keeps finding 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

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.

  • punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He fights, he hits everything, and 138 penalty minutes in 59 career games is a rate almost nobody in the modern league carries.”

  • takes-libertiesa strength· crosses the line and knows where it is

    “He takes liberties and he knows exactly where the line is, which is a skill and also the thing that gets a fourth line sat down.”

  • nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point

    “He fights, he hits everything, and 138 penalty minutes in 59 career games is a rate almost nobody in the modern league carries.”

  • net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips

    “The hands work at a standstill in front of the net and nowhere else”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 311 minutes

Expected goals
44.1%
13th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43%
6th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 10 for, 6 against. Expected: 11.5 and 14.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
3rd
Numbers
13th

The two rank him within 10 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 60 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, 2024-25 · 42 games

Top speed
22.8 mph
77th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
2.24 a game

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

Distance
1.37 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
81.2 mph
25th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.9

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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 311 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, 2024-25

The club
NYR took 47.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 44.1% — 3.6 below the club he did it on.
The role
311 minutes at five-on-five — 6th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Sam Carrick44.5%43.7%44.8%
Braden Schneider35.8%51.2%47.7%
Jonny Brodzinski51.4%39.8%40.8%

44.5% together, 43.7% for him apart and 44.8% for Carrick apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

45 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 7 feet. 62% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.