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.
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29

Nate Danielson

Detroit Red Wings Center

28 games at 21, and the best of a bad set of Detroit numbers.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2025-26DET28257-74000316.511:03
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—28257-74000316.511:03

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

2 goals and 5 assists in 28 games — 7 points, minus-7, at 11:03 a night with 4 penalty minutes. His first NHL games, at 21.

The Finesse Game

Not enough of a sample to describe honestly. 47 unblocked attempts, 2 goals, median 28 feet with 36 per cent inside 20.

He is a two-way centre by trade and the assists rather than the goals are meant to be the return. 5 in 28 games is neither encouraging nor alarming.

The Physical Game

6-2, 195, and he competes without being heavy. 4 penalty minutes in 28 games.

The skating is good and it is what got him a look at 21 on a club with 4 centres ahead of him.

The Intangibles

270 5-on-5 minutes, which is a small sample, and it reads 47.7 per cent of the expected goals, 36th percentile — below the line and better than most of the forwards ahead of him on the depth chart.

3 points in his last 10.

He was the ninth pick in 2023 and there is nothing here yet, in either direction. Detroit has Larkin, Copp, Kasper and Compher at centre and a genuine logjam. Ask again when he gets 60 games.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 270 minutes

Expected goals
47.7%
34th 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: 6 for, 12 against. Expected: 10.4 and 11.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
44th
Numbers
34th

The two rank him within 10 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 · 28 games

Top speed
22.2 mph
49th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.64 a game

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

Distance
1.91 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
81.9 mph
30th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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 — 1 goals, 2 assists, 13 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 270 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
DET took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 47.7% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 270 minutes at five-on-five — 4th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Marco Kasper50.6%42.3%50.5%
Elmer Soderblom52.2%43.9%49.9%
Moritz Seider60.5%40.4%55.4%

50.6% together, 42.3% for him apart and 50.5% for Kasper apart. He was worse away from Kasper, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Kasper 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

47 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 36% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 11% from beyond forty.