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.

Ryan Graves

Photo by TheAHL, CC BY 2.0

Ryan Graves

Pittsburgh Penguins Defense #27

455 games, and 22 of them last season.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19COL26325+420002611.511:06
2019-20COL6991726+40450001346.718:57
2020-21COL5421315+15550001012.019:03
2021-22NJD7562228-9240001115.420:43
2022-23NJD7881826+34280021415.719:57
2023-24PIT7031114+1030001773.918:23
2024-25PIT61134-1529000392.614:59
2025-26PIT22101-310000214.815:18
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—4553386119+762230036505.118:11

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

1 goal and no assists in 22 games — 1 point, minus-3, at 15:18 a night with 10 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

40 unblocked attempts from a median of 58 feet, 3 per cent from inside 20, 1 goal. 119 points in 455 career games.

No assists in 22 games. He moves it to the nearest man and defends, and there is no offensive component whatsoever.

The Physical Game

6-5, 225, and he is genuinely large and willing in front of his own net. 10 penalty minutes in 22 games.

The skating has always been the limitation and it has got worse — he cannot recover when beaten, and forwards have known it for several years.

The Intangibles

53.2 per cent of the expected goals, 78th percentile, and 52.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 76th, in 324 minutes.

That is a small sample and a flattering one, and it sits inside a season where a defenceman on a big contract played 22 games.

He is 30, a fourth-round pick, and the games-played column is the whole page. Pittsburgh has Karlsson, Letang, Girard, Korczak and van Riemsdyk ahead of him. This is a seventh defenceman on a large salary, which is the least comfortable position on any roster.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 324 minutes

Expected goals
53.2%
78th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
52.3%
76th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 11 for, 14 against. Expected: 13.0 and 11.4.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
4th
Numbers
78th

The numbers rank him 74 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 — 61 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 · 22 games

Top speed
21.3 mph
38th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.32 a game

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

Distance
2.20 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
91.6 mph
56th 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 11 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

0

points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 0 assists, 18 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 324 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
PIT took 51.8% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.2% — 1.4 above the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 324 minutes at five-on-five — 7th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Connor Clifton58.6%45.7%54.0%
Anthony Mantha50.1%54.8%50.9%
Ben Kindel56.2%51.7%52.7%

58.6% together, 45.7% for him apart and 54.0% for Clifton apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

40 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 64 feet. 3% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 83% from beyond forty.