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.

Sam Lafferty

Photo by Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Sam Lafferty

Florida Panthers Center #18

The 1st percentile in expected goals, in 249 minutes.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20PIT506713+5230015610.79:37
2020-21PIT34066-625000330.09:47
2021-22PIT/CHI565813-1637001806.313:35
2022-23CHI/TOR70121527-113704110211.814:37
2023-24VAN79131124+4320137816.711:53
2024-25BUF60437-1528000508.09:53
2025-26CHI29112-214000911.18:36
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—378415192-4119605640810.111:35

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 1 assist in 29 games — 2 points, minus-2, at 8:36 a night with 14 penalty minutes. 9 shots on goal all season. His 5-on-5 work was done in Chicago.

The Finesse Game

9 shots in 29 games is close to the lowest rate of any forward in this edition. 92 points in 378 career games, and one of them last season.

The speed is genuine and it is the only thing on the page. He is quick enough to forecheck and to kill penalties, and nothing happens once he arrives.

The Physical Game

6-2, 205, and he plays a fast, light checking game rather than a heavy one. 14 penalty minutes in 29 games.

The Intangibles

40.7 per cent of the expected goals — 1st percentile in the league — in 249 minutes, with the chances 5.5 to 8.0 against.

The sample is small and Chicago was the worst team in the league by expected goals, so both caveats apply at full strength. It is still among the lowest figures in this book.

He is 31, a fourth-round pick, on his fifth organisation. Florida signs him for the penalty kill and the fourth line, and there is nothing in the numbers that argues for more.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 249 minutes

Expected goals
40.7%
3rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.1%
28th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 7 for, 9 against. Expected: 5.5 and 8.0.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
4th
Numbers
3rd

The two rank him within 1 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 — 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 · 29 games

Top speed
21.8 mph
30th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.90 a game

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

Distance
1.44 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
71.6 mph
6th 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 8 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

2

points in his last 8 games — 1 goals, 1 assists, 9 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 with CHI · 249 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
CHI took 43.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 40.7% — 2.5 below the club he did it on.
The role
249 minutes at five-on-five — 3rd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Landon Slaggert37.1%42.8%41.3%
Wyatt Kaiser47.0%37.6%43.9%
Matt Grzelcyk39.8%41.1%45.0%

37.1% together, 42.8% for him apart and 41.3% for Slaggert apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.

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.