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.

Ross Johnston

Photo by Michael Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ross Johnston

St. Louis Blues Left Wing #49

6-5, 107 penalty minutes, and 46 points in 307 games.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16NYI1000040000—16:17
2017-18NYI243360620001915.89:20
2018-19NYI17134+323000128.37:55
2019-20NYI32314+1780001618.87:59
2020-21NYI12011-33500050.08:44
2021-22NYI32257-344000922.210:16
2022-23NYI16022-13700020.07:48
2023-24ANA68134-12117000442.38:12
2024-25ANA43134-272001911.18:41
2025-26ANA62311140107000339.19:45
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—307143246-175790011499.48:52

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

3 goals and 11 assists in 62 games — 14 points, even in plus-minus, at 9:45 a night with 107 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Anaheim.

The Finesse Game

57 unblocked attempts, 3 goals, median 17 feet with 51 per cent from inside 20 — which is where a man his size shoots from and is the only interesting line on the page.

46 points in 307 career games, 14 of them goals. 11 assists in 62 games is a career-high sort of number for him.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 232, and the job is the job. 107 penalty minutes in under 10 minutes a night is one of the highest rates in the league.

He fights, he protects teammates, and he is undrafted out of Prince Edward Island with 300 NHL games out of doing it.

The skating is poor and it is why he cannot be given more.

The Intangibles

45.8 per cent of the expected goals, 20th percentile, and 48.2 per cent of the shot attempts, 38th, across 596 minutes in Anaheim, with the goals 27-25 in his favour.

He is 32, and this is a roster spot rather than a hockey player, which the club knows perfectly well. St. Louis has Toropchenko at 6-6 and Finley at 6-6 already. Whether all 3 dress is the question this page raises.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 596 minutes

Expected goals
45.8%
21st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48.2%
38th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 27 for, 25 against. Expected: 21.2 and 25.0.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
11th
Numbers
21st
Blind
15th

The two rank him within 10 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.

The same player was graded a second time from his biography and his box score alone, with the measured record withheld. That reading lands 6 points from the numbers; this one lands 10. Across the whole control the two distances come out the same, which is worth knowing in both directions: the arithmetic on both sides of the sighted reading did not buy it any accuracy, and it did not cost it any either.

All three 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 — 64 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 · 62 games

Top speed
21.6 mph
24th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.60 a game

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

Distance
1.61 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
83.0 mph
37th 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

4

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 3 assists, 11 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with ANA · 596 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
ANA took 50.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.8% — 4.8 below the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 596 minutes at five-on-five — 23rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jacob Trouba44.1%46.9%50.6%
Ryan Poehling53.2%41.3%46.5%
Jackson LaCombe50.5%43.5%52.1%

44.1% together, 46.9% for him apart and 50.6% for Trouba apart. Trouba was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.

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

57 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 11% from beyond forty.