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.

Morgan Rielly

Photo by Michael Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0

Morgan Rielly

Toronto Maple Leafs Defense #44

951 games, 451 assists, and minus 18.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2013-14TOR7322527-1312100962.117:38
2014-15TOR8182129-16141001485.420:20
2015-16TOR8292736-17282101675.423:14
2016-17TOR7662127-20211011713.522:10
2017-18TOR7664652-4141001823.321:36
2018-19TOR82205272+24143052239.023:07
2019-20TOR4732427+6240021232.424:12
2020-21TOR5553035+11141011015.023:37
2021-22TOR82105868+16402032214.523:44
2022-23TOR6543741-9211011263.221:42
2023-24TOR7275158+7271001734.023:44
2024-25TOR8273441-8211021265.621:23
2025-26TOR78112536-18291021417.821:08
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—95198451549-412791611719984.922:03

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

11 goals and 25 assists in 78 games — 36 points, minus-18, at 21:08 a night with 29 penalty minutes.

His 951st career game and his 549th point. 451 career assists.

The Finesse Game

The skating has held up and it is still the best thing about him — he exits his own zone with the puck as well as any defenceman on the roster and joins the rush without hesitation.

212 unblocked attempts from a median of 45 feet, 11 goals. 98 goals in 951 career games.

25 assists is the lowest full-season figure of his career by some distance.

The Physical Game

6-1, 219, and he does not defend with his body. 29 penalty minutes.

He loses net-front battles, does not clear a crease, and the defensive reads have been the criticism for 13 seasons. At 32 the skating no longer covers as much of it.

The Intangibles

48.3 per cent of the expected goals, 40th percentile, and 48.0 per cent of the shot attempts, 36th, across 1,350 minutes, with the goals 67 for and 78 against.

By the standards of this particular club those are the second-best chance-share figures on the roster, which is the sort of thing that only sounds like praise until you read the rest of the section.

3 points in his last 10. He is 32, the fifth pick in 2012, and has spent 14 seasons as the longest- serving Maple Leaf on a run of clubs that has won 2 playoff rounds.

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.

  • durable· was available

    78 of 82 games

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

  • sheltered· is started in the attacking end

    65% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 98th percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,350 minutes

Expected goals
48.3%
40th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48%
37th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 67 for, 78 against. Expected: 59.1 and 63.1.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
44th
Numbers
40th

The two rank him within 4 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

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 — 71 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
22.7 mph
87th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.91 a game

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

Distance
3.09 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
87.1 mph
32nd 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

3

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 1 assists, 17 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1350 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
TOR took 46.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.3% — 2.0 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 1,350 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Brandon Carlo47.0%49.1%42.8%
John Tavares49.9%47.6%47.7%
Matthew Knies46.0%49.4%43.5%

47.0% together, 49.1% for him apart and 42.8% for Carlo apart. Carlo was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Carlo than for him.

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

212 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 11 of them goals. His median goal came from 26 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 62% from beyond forty.