Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

19

Reilly Smith

New York Rangers Right Wing

Eight hundred and forty games, a career plus-127, and thirteen career shorthanded goals.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2011-12DAL3000-3200020.08:24
2012-13DAL3736908000348.810:55
2013-14BOS82203151+281460314613.714:42
2014-15BOS81132740+7201001439.115:24
2015-16FLA82252550+193150317314.418:37
2016-17FLA80152237-13176131609.418:21
2017-18VGK67223860+312471416213.617:55
2018-19VGK74193453+131441117810.718:16
2019-20VGK71272754+172032616916.017:55
2020-21VGK53141125+101842112411.317:52
2021-22VGK56162238+4832315010.717:47
2022-23VGK78263056+111664418014.416:58
2023-24PIT76132740+3181031528.616:08
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—840213300513+127210461331177312.016:54

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

76 games in Pittsburgh, 13 goals and 27 assists for 40 points, 1 on the power play, 18 penalty minutes, 16:08 a night and plus-3. He took 52.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,027 minutes, the 72nd percentile, and his ice went 42-37 against an expectation of 44.49-40.05, all of it with the Penguins.

Two goals of scoring that did not arrive and three fewer conceded than the chances called for. Forty points at 32 on a club that finished outside the playoffs is a fair season.

The Finesse Game

152 shots at a median of 22 feet with 48 per cent from inside 20, converted at 8.6 per cent against a career 12.01.

300 career assists in 840 games. Thirteen goals on a hundred and fifty-two shots is five below his own rate and the assists are where the value is. He reads a play early and moves the puck before the pressure arrives.

The Physical Game

He is 6-1 and 185 and does not defend with contact.

210 career penalty minutes in 840 games is a very low rate. He forechecks by anticipation, kills penalties, and has 13 career shorthanded goals in 840 games.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2009 by Dallas, out of Mimico, thirteen seasons across five organisations, and 513 points in 840 games at a career plus-127. He won the Stanley Cup in Vegas.

He is 33 and a career plus-127 is a very large number for a forward who has never been a first-line player. New York has bought a third-line winger who kills penalties and has won.

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.

  • playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “He reads a play early and moves the puck before the pressure arrives.”

  • penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short

    “He forechecks by anticipation, kills penalties, and has 13 career shorthanded goals in 840 games.”

  • forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck

    “He forechecks by anticipation, kills penalties, and has 13 career shorthanded goals in 840 games.”

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He is 6-1 and 185 and does not defend with contact.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,027 minutes

Expected goals
52.6%
72nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
51.4%
67th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 42 for, 37 against. Expected: 44.5 and 40.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
62nd
Numbers
72nd

The two rank him within 10 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 72 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, 2023-24 · 76 games

Top speed
22.3 mph
53rd pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
0.95 a game

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

Distance
2.81 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
86.0 mph
45th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with PIT · 1027 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, 2023-24

The club
PIT took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.6% — 1.5 above the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,027 minutes at five-on-five — 62nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Evgeni Malkin54.2%49.9%52.3%
Erik Karlsson54.7%50.9%53.7%
Marcus Pettersson54.6%51.6%53.1%

54.2% together, 49.9% for him apart and 52.3% for Malkin apart. He was worse away from Malkin, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Malkin 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

210 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 13 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 16% from beyond forty.