Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

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 2025-26 report →

61

Michael Pezzetta

Montreal Canadiens Left Wing

The fourth-worst chance share in this edition, and the second-largest finishing surplus per minute in it.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22MTL515611-7810004910.27:50
2022-23MTL637815-4770007010.09:19
2023-24MTL613912+459001427.17:48
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—175152338-72170011619.38:21

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

61 games, 3 goals and 9 assists for 12 points, 59 penalty minutes, 7:48 a night and plus-4. He took 37.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 468 minutes, the 1st percentile, and his ice went 20-16 against an expectation of 11.25-19.19.

That 37.0 per cent is the fourth-worst chance share of any skater in this edition with four hundred five-on-five minutes. His ice scored nine more goals than the chances were worth and conceded three fewer — a surplus per minute second only to Max Domi’s. Both halves of that are almost certainly noise, and the plus-4 out of the first percentile is one of the strangest lines in the book.

The Finesse Game

59 attempts at a median of 36 feet with 37 per cent from beyond 40, converted at 7.1 per cent against a career 9.32.

23 career assists in 175 games. Fifteen goals in three seasons is the record and the shot chart says why — a fourth-line winger shooting from beyond the dots. There is no offence here and none is asked for.

The Physical Game

He hits everything at 6-1 and 222 and 217 career penalty minutes in 175 games at under nine minutes a night is one of the higher rates in hockey.

He will fight anybody, takes liberties after the whistle, and is on the roster to do it. On a club that spends the fifth-most time shorthanded in the league that is a cost as well as a service.

The Intangibles

A sixth-round pick in 2016 out of Toronto, three seasons, and 38 points in 175 games, all of it for one organisation.

He is 26 and plays under eight minutes a night. On the second-youngest roster in this edition there is a case for a man who will answer for the twenty-year-olds, and there is a better case for the ice going to one of them.

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
  • 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.

  • punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He hits everything at 6-1 and 222 and 217 career penalty minutes in 175 games at under nine minutes a night is one of the higher rates in hockey.”

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

    “He will fight anybody, takes liberties after the whistle, and is on the roster to do it.”

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

    “He will fight anybody, takes liberties after the whistle, and is on the roster to do it.”

  • net-fronthe lacks it· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips

    “Fifteen goals in three seasons is the record and the shot chart says why — a fourth-line winger shooting from beyond the dots.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 468 minutes

Expected goals
37%
1st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
42.5%
6th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 20 for, 16 against. Expected: 11.3 and 19.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
15th
Numbers
1st

The two rank him within 14 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 — 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, 2023-24 · 61 games

Top speed
22.5 mph
68th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.85 a game

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

Distance
1.31 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
88.4 mph
60th 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 · 468 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
MTL took 46.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 37.0% — 9.1 below the club he did it on.
The role
468 minutes at five-on-five — 16th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jesse Ylönen38.0%36.3%39.7%
Johnathan Kovacevic37.9%36.5%47.8%
Jake Evans39.3%36.0%45.7%

38.0% together, 36.3% for him apart and 39.7% for Ylönen 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

59 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 27% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 37% from beyond forty.