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.

Nick Paul

Photo by TheAHL, CC BY 2.0

Nick Paul

Toronto Maple Leafs Left Wing #20

6-4, 537 games, and 2 Stanley Cup runs.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16OTT24235-36000287.112:12
2016-17OTT1000-2000040.016:29
2017-18OTT11101-40000119.17:54
2018-19OTT20112-104000303.38:28
2019-20OTT56911200240021038.714:27
2020-21OTT5651520+5190101054.816:05
2021-22OTT/TBL80161632-14392121669.616:31
2022-23TBL80171532+113341412014.216:10
2023-24TBL82242246-162790215315.717:16
2024-25TBL76221941+133020314115.616:27
2025-26TBL517815-15321016810.313:41
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—537104110214-352141831492911.215:22

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

7 goals and 8 assists in 51 games — 15 points, minus-15, at 13:41 a night with 32 penalty minutes. 31 games missed. His 5-on-5 work was done in Tampa.

His 537th career game.

The Finesse Game

109 unblocked attempts, 7 goals, median 22 feet with 46 per cent from inside 20. Good ice, modest volume, poor conversion.

214 points in 537 career games. 8 assists in 51 games is thin and this was the least productive full season of his career.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 234 pounds, and among the physically strongest forwards in the league — he protects pucks below the goal line, wins the wall, and forechecks with genuine weight.

32 penalty minutes is disciplined for the size.

The Intangibles

49.9 per cent of the expected goals, 54th percentile, and 51.4 per cent of the shot attempts, 69th, across 595 minutes in Tampa, with the goals 18-30.

Those are good figures and they were produced on the best possession club in the conference, which is the caveat attached to every Tampa number in this book.

He is 31, a fourth-round pick, 2 Stanley Cups, and 31 games missed. Toronto is buying playoff experience and size for a lineup that had almost none of either; the question is how many nights it gets.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 595 minutes

Expected goals
49.9%
54th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.4%
70th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 18 for, 30 against. Expected: 20.6 and 20.7.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
73rd
Numbers
54th

The two rank him within 19 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 — 76 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 · 51 games

Top speed
22.5 mph
64th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.31 a game

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

Distance
2.20 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
82.9 mph
36th 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, 19 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with TBL · 595 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
TBL took 53.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.9% — 4.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 595 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Oliver Bjorkstrand48.7%50.6%49.2%
Charle-Edouard D'Astous56.6%46.0%55.3%
Darren Raddysh50.4%49.6%57.6%

48.7% together, 50.6% for him apart and 49.2% for Bjorkstrand 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

109 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 46% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 17% from beyond forty.