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.

Mikhail Sergachev

Photo by Michael Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0

Mikhail Sergachev

Utah Mammoth Defense #98

24 minutes a night, 49 assists, and 2 Stanley Cups.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17MTL4000+1000020.012:08
2017-18TBL7993140+11383051416.415:22
2018-19TBL7562632+12280001284.717:55
2019-20TBL70102434+15585101188.520:22
2020-21TBL5642630+5300011083.721:58
2021-22TBL7873138+6591011494.722:28
2022-23TBL79105464+13533021566.423:49
2023-24TBL3421719-1616000533.822:33
2024-25UTA77153853-83231313211.425:07
2025-26UTA78104959+2445011596.324:18
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—63073296369+413582021311466.421:25

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

10 goals and 49 assists in 78 games — 59 points, plus-2, at 24:18 a night — the heaviest workload on the club — with 5 power-play goals and 44 penalty minutes.

His 630th career game and his 369th point.

The Finesse Game

214 unblocked attempts from a median of 49 feet, 70 per cent from beyond 40, 10 goals. That is an excellent conversion for a point shot and the shot is genuinely heavy.

49 assists is a top-10 figure among defencemen and the best of his career. 296 career assists.

The Physical Game

6-3, 212, and he defends with reach and skating rather than by punishing people. 44 penalty minutes.

He has come back from a broken leg that cost him most of a season and the mobility appears intact, which was the open question when Utah traded for him.

The Intangibles

51.2 per cent of the expected goals, 65th percentile, and 52.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 78th, across 1,364 minutes, with the goals 60 for and 62 against, a shade the wrong side of level.

13 points in his last 10, none of them goals.

He is 28, 2 Stanley Cups in Tampa, and the number-1 defenceman on a club that finished level in possession and has never been to a playoff round in this city or the last one.

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.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data

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.

  • hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range

    8 of 150 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 5.3%, 95th percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it

  • durable· was available

    78 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,364 minutes

Expected goals
51.2%
65th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
52.5%
78th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 60 for, 62 against. Expected: 60.3 and 57.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
89th
Numbers
65th

The report ranks him 24 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 80 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 · 78 games

Top speed
23.8 mph
99th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.12 a game

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

Distance
3.30 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
99.0 mph
94th 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

13

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 13 assists, 23 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1364 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
UTA took 53.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.2% — 1.9 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,364 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Sean Durzi54.2%49.4%52.9%
Clayton Keller54.5%49.4%58.0%
Nick Schmaltz52.6%50.5%57.4%

54.2% together, 49.4% for him apart and 52.9% for Durzi apart. He was worse away from Durzi, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Durzi did.

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

214 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 49 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.