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.
← 2024-25 edition
67

Mitchell Stephens

Seattle Kraken Center

Ninety-five games in four seasons from a second-round pick, on his fourth organisation.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20TBL38336-910000437.010:47
2020-21TBL7011-5000030.09:28
2021-22DET27066-88000170.011:11
2023-24MTL23213+240001612.59:03
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—9551116-2022000796.310:23

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

23 games with Montreal, 2 goals and 1 assist, 4 penalty minutes, 9:03 a night and plus-2.

Nine minutes a night in 23 games, after a season in which he played none at all. Two goals on 16 shots is a 12.5 per cent rate against a career 6.33, on a sample too small to mean anything.

The Finesse Game

19 attempts at a median of 32 feet with 37 per cent of them from inside twenty, 14 of those on goal, converted at 12.5 per cent against a career 6.33 across 79 shots.

Five career goals and 11 assists in 95 games. There is no scoring here and the second-round pick has produced nothing that a club would pay for; what he offers is a fourth-line shift that does not cost anything.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 203 and took 4 penalty minutes.

Twenty-two career penalty minutes in 95 games. He is compact and solid and finishes checks on the forecheck, which is the reason four different clubs have given him a look.

The Intangibles

Thirty-third overall in 2015 by Tampa Bay, four seasons, four organisations, and 16 points in 95 games.

A career minus-20 and no NHL games at all in 2022-23. He is 27, he was a second-round pick, and 95 games in nine years since the draft is the whole record.

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.

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

    “There is no scoring here and the second-round pick has produced nothing that a club would pay for; what he offers is a fourth-line shift that does not cost anything.”

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

    “He is compact and solid and finishes checks on the forecheck, which is the reason four different clubs have given him a look.”

The numbers underneath

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2023-24 · 23 games

Top speed
22.5 mph
66th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.22 a game

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

Distance
1.39 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
75.8 mph
11th 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 with MTL · 185 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

19 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 16 feet. 37% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.