Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

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.
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72

Sergei Bobrovsky

Florida Panthers Goaltender

A .9149 across 700 games, undrafted, and the reason a club that finished 26th at finishing has a Stanley Cup.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2010-11PHI54281381302.5901527.915
2011-12PHI2914102783.020769.899
2012-13CBJ3821116742.0041084.932
2013-14CBJ58322051312.3851699.923
2014-15CBJ51301731342.6821632.918
2015-16CBJ3715191972.7511049.907
2016-17CBJ63411751272.0671854.931
2017-18CBJ65372261582.4251993.921
2018-19CBJ62372411532.5891756.913
2019-20FLA50231961513.2311505.900
2020-21FLA311982882.910935.906
2021-22FLA5439731372.6731566.912
2022-23FLA50242031453.0711466.901
2023-24FLA58361741352.3761584.915
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—7003962245517382.594420419.915

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

58 games, 36-17-4 with a .9148 and a 2.37, facing 1,584 shots, with 6 shutouts.

The club’s goaltending came in 24.7 goals better than the chances it faced, third in the league, and he faced almost all of them. His career line across 700 games is a .9149 — last season was his career rate to three decimal places, which after fourteen seasons is a remarkable thing to be able to write.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 180 and plays an aggressive game, coming to the top of the crease and cutting the angle down rather than waiting on his line.

At 180 pounds he has no choice: there is not enough of him to block a net from the paint. The lateral recovery is the best part of him and always has been, and he gets across on a cross-ice pass later than a bigger goaltender and arrives anyway. He tracks the puck through traffic as well as anybody in the league, which on a club that concedes as many outside shots as this one is the difference between a save and a rebound.

The Mental Game

He spent three years being the most criticised contract in hockey and said nothing about it in public.

The reputation for playoff collapse followed him from Columbus for a decade and he has now won a Stanley Cup with a .915. Whatever the mechanism is by which a goaltender is supposed to be mentally unsuited to April, he has disproved it in the only way available.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Novokuznetsk, fourteen seasons, 700 games, 396 career wins and 44 shutouts. Two Vezinas and a Cup.

396 wins is second in this edition behind Marc-Andre Fleury. He is 36 and the save percentage has not moved in fourteen years, and the number of goaltenders for whom that stays true at 37 is small.

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.

  • plays-aggressivea strength· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “He is 6-2 and 180 and plays an aggressive game, coming to the top of the crease and cutting the angle down rather than waiting on his line.”

  • plays-deephe lacks it· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He is 6-2 and 180 and plays an aggressive game, coming to the top of the crease and cutting the angle down rather than waiting on his line.”

  • lateral-recoverya strength· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “The lateral recovery is the best part of him and always has been, and he gets across on a cross-ice pass later than a bigger goaltender and arrives anyway.”

  • tracks-traffica strength· finds it through a screen

    “He tracks the puck through traffic as well as anybody in the league, which on a club that concedes as many outside shots as this one is the difference between a save and a rebound.”

  • undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached

    “Undrafted, out of Novokuznetsk, fourteen seasons, 700 games, 396 career wins and 44 shutouts.”