Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.

Rasmus Sandin

Photo by Meredith Zylberberg, CC BY-SA 4.0

Rasmus Sandin

Washington Capitals Defense #38

382 games, 24 assists, and 12 penalty minutes.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20TOR28178-710001224.514:19
2020-21TOR9044+6000090.014:40
2021-22TOR5151116+940034610.916:58
2022-23TOR/WSH7172835+339000818.619:19
2023-24WSH6832023-1324001793.821:07
2024-25WSH8242630+1323100785.119:11
2025-26WSH7352429+412001905.619:12
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—38225120145+151121064056.218:48

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

5 goals and 24 assists in 73 games — 29 points, plus-4, at 19:12 a night with only 12 penalty minutes.

His 382nd career game and his 145th point.

The Finesse Game

A puck-mover by trade. 131 unblocked attempts from a median of 51 feet, 70 per cent from beyond 40, 5 goals.

24 assists is a fair rate and 120 assists against 25 goals in 382 games says exactly what kind of defenceman he is: the outlet and the power-play half-wall, not the shot.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 189 pounds, and light. 12 penalty minutes across 73 games is one of the lowest rates of any defenceman in this edition.

He cannot clear a crease and is moved off his own net front routinely. The skating covers a great deal of it and not all of it.

The Intangibles

Exactly 49.7 per cent of the expected goals, 52nd percentile, against 47.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 32nd, across 1,215 minutes, with the chances level at 49.4 and 49.5.

Dead level in a top-4 role is a fair season, and the plus-4 is honest by the standards of this particular club.

5 points in his last 10. He is 26, a 29th overall pick Toronto gave up on at 23, and a perfectly useful second-pair defenceman ever since.

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.

  • disciplined· stays out of the box

    0.16 penalty minutes a game over 73, 3rd percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,215 minutes

Expected goals
49.7%
53rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.7%
33rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 49 for, 51 against. Expected: 48.9 and 49.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
27th
Numbers
53rd

The numbers rank him 26 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

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 — 68 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 · 73 games

Top speed
22.0 mph
60th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.84 a game

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

Distance
2.76 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
90.7 mph
52nd 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

5

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 4 assists, 11 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1215 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
WSH took 49.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.7% — 0.2 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 1,215 minutes at five-on-five — 83rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Anthony Beauvillier49.8%49.7%47.6%
Dylan Strome49.0%50.1%47.8%
Alex Ovechkin48.7%50.2%50.0%

49.8% together, 49.7% for him apart and 47.6% for Beauvillier 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

131 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 11% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 70% from beyond forty.