Armchair Hockey Scout

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2025-26 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 2025-26 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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77

Simon Edvinsson

Detroit Red Wings Defense

6-6, 31 points at 22, and a plus-12 on a club that was minus-23.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2022-23DET9202-712000540.017:04
2023-24DET1611204000137.718:15
2024-25DET7872431+1267003868.121:07
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—103102535+5830031049.620:19

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

7 goals and 24 assists in 78 games for 31 points, plus-12 on a club with a minus-23 goal differential — the best rating on the roster — on 21:07 a night.

48.8 per cent at five-on-five, the 42nd percentile, over 1,377 minutes. His on-ice goals were 51-46 against an expected 54-56, so both ends ran cold and the results came out even.

The Finesse Game

The skating for 6-6 is genuinely unusual — long and easy, quick enough to recover when beaten wide, and comfortable carrying the puck out of trouble. That combination is the whole reason he was a 6th overall pick.

86 shots and 7 goals with a tenth of his attempts from inside 20 feet, which is an aggressive profile for a defenceman. 24 assists at 22 is a good return and the first pass is quick without yet being consistently right under pressure.

The Physical Game

6-6 and 222, and he uses it. He clears a crease, closes a rush with reach, and is difficult to get around at the blue line — the physical maturity is well ahead of the age.

67 penalty minutes over 78 games is a high rate and reflects a young defenceman still learning where the line is.

The Intangibles

A 6th overall pick, a slow arrival through the American League, and a first full NHL season at 22 in top-four minutes.

He is the second-best defenceman in the organisation and the reason the club can contemplate not overpaying elsewhere. The projection is a genuine top-pair defenceman; the 39th-percentile share is a team number more than a personal one.

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.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
  • a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

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.

  • hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range

    5 of 84 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 6.0%, 98th percentile among defencemen

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it

  • durable· was available

    78 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

  • transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “long and easy, quick enough to recover when beaten wide, and comfortable carrying the puck out of trouble”

  • clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net

    “He clears a crease, closes a rush with reach, and is difficult to get around at the blue line”

  • defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens

    “He clears a crease, closes a rush with reach, and is difficult to get around at the blue line”

  • hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “is difficult to get around at the blue line”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,377 minutes

Expected goals
48.8%
43rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
48%
34th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 51 for, 46 against. Expected: 53.7 and 56.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
80th
Numbers
43rd

The report ranks him 37 points above where the numbers do. 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. 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 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, 2024-25 · 78 games

Top speed
21.7 mph
55th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.51 a game

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

Distance
2.91 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
90.7 mph
49th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 89.7

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

2024-25 · 1377 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, 2024-25

The club
DET took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 48.8% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second pair, 1,377 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Albert Johansson46.8%50.1%46.8%
Moritz Seider52.3%47.2%49.3%
Alex DeBrincat50.4%48.0%51.4%

46.8% together, 50.1% for him apart and 46.8% for Johansson apart. He was better away from Johansson, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Johansson.

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

128 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 10% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 65% from beyond forty.