Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.

29

Matthew Robertson

New York Rangers Defense

6 years after the draft, a first full NHL season at 24.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2024-25NYR2000+3000020.017:38
2025-26NYR7261218-138002797.617:24
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—7461218+238002817.417:24

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

6 goals and 12 assists in 72 games — 18 points, minus-1, at 17:24 a night with 38 penalty minutes. His first real NHL season, at 24, 6 years after being drafted.

The Finesse Game

Modest. 126 unblocked attempts from a median of 56 feet, 3 per cent from inside 20, 6 goals.

6 goals from that distance is a high conversion and will not repeat. 12 assists in 72 games is the honest measure of what he does with the puck.

The Physical Game

6-4, 210, and he defends soundly. 38 penalty minutes. He clears the crease and closes gaps without over-committing, which is the whole of the third-pair job.

The Intangibles

48.7 per cent of the expected goals, 43rd percentile, and 48.8 per cent of the shot attempts, 43rd, across 1,131 minutes.

Below the line and, on this blue line, the third-best mark of the 6 — ahead of Schneider at the 10th percentile and well ahead of Pettersson arriving from the fifth.

4 points in his last 10. He is 25, a 49th overall pick, and 74 career games in. 6 years in the minors and then a full season at 17 minutes is a career that almost did not happen, and this is roughly what it should look like.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,131 minutes

Expected goals
48.7%
44th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.8%
44th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 47 against. Expected: 43.3 and 45.6.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
23rd
Numbers
44th

The numbers rank him 21 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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 · 72 games

Top speed
22.5 mph
81st pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.39 a game

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

Distance
2.39 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
94.0 mph
73rd 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

4

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 2 assists, 14 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1131 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
NYR took 48.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.7% — 0.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,131 minutes at five-on-five — 75th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Will Borgen47.2%49.6%44.5%
Alexis Lafrenière53.7%46.4%53.2%
Noah Laba48.0%48.9%44.5%

47.2% together, 49.6% for him apart and 44.5% for Borgen 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

126 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 48 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 76% from beyond forty.