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.

Nils Hoglander

Photo by Northwest, CC BY-SA 4.0

Nils Hoglander

Nashville Predators Left Wing #21

5-9, 120 points in 300 games, and 5 last season.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2020-21VAN56131427-41610111811.015:27
2021-22VAN6010818-6241001327.613:05
2022-23VAN25369-460002910.312:03
2023-24VAN80241236+235100512020.012:06
2024-25VAN7281725+530002839.612:08
2025-26VAN38235-48000355.711:31
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—3316060120+1013520851711.612:47

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 3 assists in 38 games — 5 points, minus-4, at 11:31 a night with 8 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Vancouver.

The Finesse Game

Almost nothing arrived. 63 unblocked attempts, 2 goals, median 25 feet with 40 per cent from inside 20 — decent ice and no finish at all.

60 goals in 331 career games says he can score, and he had a 24 goal season 2 years ago. 5 points in 38 games is a collapse rather than a level.

The Physical Game

5-9 and 185 pounds, and he plays a scrappy, low-to-the-ice game built on being hard to knock over. 8 penalty minutes in 38 games.

He goes to the net front at his size, which is admirable and is where a good deal of his best scoring came from.

The Intangibles

45.4 per cent of the expected goals, 18th percentile, with the goals 9-13 against across 425 minutes. That is the worst forward mark of anyone joining this club.

The shot-attempt share of 49.3 per cent, 48th percentile, is far healthier, which says his line had the puck and did nothing dangerous with it.

He is 25, a second-round pick, and 2 seasons removed from 24 goals. Nashville is buying the rebound cheaply. On this evidence there is a real player in there and last season was not him.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 425 minutes

Expected goals
45.4%
18th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.8%
55th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 9 for, 13 against. Expected: 15.7 and 18.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
23rd
Numbers
18th

The two rank him within 5 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 — 67 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 · 38 games

Top speed
21.4 mph
18th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.95 a game

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

Distance
1.94 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
93.6 mph
94th 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

2

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 1 assists, 13 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with VAN · 425 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
VAN took 43.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.4% — 1.9 above the club he did it on.
The role
425 minutes at five-on-five — 13th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Filip Hronek43.3%46.7%45.2%
Aatu Räty47.3%44.4%43.0%
Marcus Pettersson45.7%45.2%42.2%

43.3% together, 46.7% for him apart and 45.2% for Hronek apart. He was better away from Hronek, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Hronek.

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

63 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 25 feet. 40% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.