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 →

46

Max Jones

Edmonton Oilers Left Wing

26 games, 2 points, and a minus-13 in nine minutes a night.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19ANA30235-114001583.513:10
2019-20ANA598412-6360101027.814:16
2020-21ANA467411-936201779.114:10
2021-22ANA2000-11500020.09:54
2022-23ANA6991019-21770021078.412:43
2023-24ANA5251015-633000766.612:03
2024-25BOS/EDM26112-1318000175.99:23
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—284323264-572292144397.312:52

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

1 goal and 1 assist in 26 games for 2 points, minus-13 in 9:23 a night, which is a remarkable rate of damage for that little ice time.

17 shots in 26 games. There is nothing here that recommends a roster spot on a contender.

The Finesse Game

Almost none. 2 points in 26 games, and his career high is 21 points in a season six years ago.

The hands do not function at NHL speed with the puck and there has never been any suggestion they would.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 216, and this is the job. He hits, he fights, and he forechecks with real weight.

18 penalty minutes in 26 games is a high rate. On a club with the league’s best penalty kill the marginal cost is lower than most, and it is still a cost.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, three organisations, and a career built on physicality after the scoring did not arrive.

The projection is an extra forward. Edmonton signed him for the depth a long playoff run requires, which is a reasonable use of a minimum contract and not much more.

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 hits, he fights, and he forechecks with real weight.”

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

    “he fights”

  • forechecks-aggressivelya strength· first man in, and on the puck

    “he forechecks with real weight”

The numbers underneath

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 26 games

Top speed
22.2 mph
47th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.92 a game

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

Distance
1.51 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
80.1 mph
19th 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 · 131 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.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

30 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 47% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.