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.
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50

Nico Daws

New Jersey Devils Goaltender

Forty-six career games at an .8937, and the only goaltender in the organisation under thirty.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2021-22NJD2510111663.110617.893
2023-24NJD219110603.150568.894
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—46192211263.1301185.894

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

21 games, 9-11-0, an .8944 save percentage and a 3.15 goals-against average on 568 shots faced, with no shutouts.

That is almost exactly his career line — .8937 across 46 games — and it came as one of five goaltenders on a club that finished 26th at goaltending. Twenty-one games is a real sample and the answer it gives is no.

The Physical Game

He is 6-4 and 205 and plays a deep, blocking game that relies on filling the net rather than tracking to the puck.

No career shutouts in 46 games. He is large and slow across the crease, and the second shot is where the goals come from. The puck-handling is ordinary and he keeps it simple.

The Mental Game

Rebound control is the weakness and it is the same weakness at every level he has played.

He tracks the first shot through traffic well enough, which at 6-4 is what the style is built on. Two seasons of forty-six games spread across four years is not a development curve.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2020 out of Munich, two seasons, and 46 games at an .8937, all of it for one organisation.

He is 23 and is the only goaltender in this organisation under thirty. Behind two 34-year-olds that matters more than the .8944 does.

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.

  • plays-deepa strength· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He is 6-4 and 205 and plays a deep, blocking game that relies on filling the net rather than tracking to the puck.”

  • plays-aggressivehe lacks it· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “He is 6-4 and 205 and plays a deep, blocking game that relies on filling the net rather than tracking to the puck.”

  • lateral-recoveryhe lacks it· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “He is large and slow across the crease, and the second shot is where the goals come from.”

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “Rebound control is the weakness and it is the same weakness at every level he has played.”

  • puck-handlinghe lacks it· starts the breakout himself

    “The puck-handling is ordinary and he keeps it simple.”

  • tracks-traffica strength· finds it through a screen

    “He tracks the first shot through traffic well enough, which at 6-4 is what the style is built on.”