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.

Matthew Kessel

Photo by Airman 1st Class Elijah Harris, Public domain

Matthew Kessel

New York Islanders Defense #51

99 games across 4 seasons, and 3 goals.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23STL2000-1000030.015:10
2023-24STL39167012000283.616:48
2024-25STL29033-310000170.013:08
2025-26STL29213+1100012010.012:32
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—9931013-332001684.414:27

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

2 goals and 1 assist in 29 games — 3 points, plus-1, at 12:32 a night with 10 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in St Louis.

The Finesse Game

31 unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet, 6 per cent from inside 20, 2 goals. 13 points in 99 career games.

He makes the safe pass and gets off the ice. There is no evidence of anything more and the role does not require it.

The Physical Game

6-3, 212, and he defends adequately without imposing. 10 penalty minutes in 29 games.

The Intangibles

45.7 per cent of the expected goals, 20th percentile, and 46.1 per cent of the shot attempts, 19th, across 349 minutes — a thin sample and a poor one.

He is 26, a fifth-round pick, and 4 seasons into a career that has produced 99 NHL games and no clear role.

New York’s blue line is Schaefer, Pelech, Pulock, Mayfield, DeAngelo and Bear. This is a seventh defenceman and the page cannot honestly say more.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 349 minutes

Expected goals
45.7%
20th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
46.1%
20th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 12 for, 11 against. Expected: 10.8 and 12.8.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
6th
Numbers
20th

The two rank him within 14 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 — 62 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 · 29 games

Top speed
21.5 mph
44th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.59 a game

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

Distance
1.87 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
95.2 mph
80th 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 15 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

2

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 1 assists, 14 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with STL · 349 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
STL took 50.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.7% — 4.5 below the club he did it on.
The role
349 minutes at five-on-five — 9th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Tyler Tucker49.6%42.1%52.6%
Dalibor Dvorsky53.0%43.0%46.3%
Brayden Schenn46.6%45.4%49.5%

49.6% together, 42.1% for him apart and 52.6% for Tucker apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Tucker and did not follow him.

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

31 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 36 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 65% from beyond forty.