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.

15

Sonny Milano

Washington Capitals Left Wing

Fifteen goals on 50 shots — 30.0 per cent, the highest rate in this edition among men who took forty.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2015-16CBJ3011+1000020.013:23
2016-17CBJ4000-3000020.011:41
2017-18CBJ5514822-8100036920.311:39
2018-19CBJ810100000520.08:19
2019-20CBJ/ANA5571623-726102759.313:06
2020-21ANA60000000080.014:44
2021-22ANA66142034-9105039414.915:17
2022-23WSH64112233-5181038013.812:54
2023-24WSH4915823+4103025030.012:30
2024-25 so far—————————————
Career—3106275137-27741001338516.113:04

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

49 games, 15 goals and 8 assists for 23 points, 3 on the power play, 10 penalty minutes, 12:30 a night and plus-4, with 2 game-winners. He took 51.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 563 minutes, the 62nd percentile, and his ice went 25-19 against an expectation of 21.42-20.43.

Four goals of finishing above what the chances were worth and a goal of goaltending above them. Fifteen goals on 50 shots is a 30.0 per cent rate, the highest of anybody in this edition who took forty, and it is a rate nobody sustains.

The Finesse Game

67 attempts at a median of 18 feet with 57 per cent of them from inside twenty and 6 per cent from beyond forty, 50 of those on goal, converted at 30.0 per cent against a career 16.10 across 385 shots.

Sixty-two career goals and 75 assists in 310 games. Six per cent of his attempts came from beyond forty feet, the lowest share on this club; he does not shoot unless he is inside the dots, which is why a career 16.10 per cent has held across three hundred and eighty-five shots.

The Physical Game

He is 6-0 and 205 and took 10 penalty minutes.

Seventy-four career penalty minutes in 310 games. He is a reasonable size and plays no physical game at all; the puck is received rather than won, and nine seasons of clubs weighing that against the finishing have ended with him on his third.

The Intangibles

Sixteenth overall in 2014 by Columbus, nine seasons, and Washington is his third organisation.

A career minus-27 and 13 game-winners in 310 games. He was a first-round pick, he is 28, and he has never played more than 66 games in a season.

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
  • 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.

  • slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored

    65.7% of his attempts in the slot, 92nd percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it

  • net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips

    “Six per cent of his attempts came from beyond forty feet, the lowest share on this club; he does not shoot unless he is inside the dots, which is why a career 16.10 per cent has held across three hundred and eighty-five shots.”

  • forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck

    “He is a reasonable size and plays no physical game at all; the puck is received rather than won, and nine seasons of clubs weighing that against the finishing have ended with him on his third.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 563 minutes

Expected goals
51.2%
62nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
47.9%
34th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 19 against. Expected: 21.4 and 20.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
76th
Numbers
62nd

The two rank him within 14 points of one another. 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.

Both bars are percentiles among the 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 75 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, 2023-24 · 49 games

Top speed
22.6 mph
73rd pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.1

Bursts over 20 mph
3.00 a game

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

Distance
2.09 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
76.3 mph
12th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 84.5

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

2023-24 · 563 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, 2023-24

The club
WSH took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.2% — 4.0 above the club he did it on.
The role
Fourth line, 563 minutes at five-on-five — 22nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
John Carlson52.3%50.5%47.0%
Max Pacioretty53.5%49.9%46.5%
Dylan Strome54.9%49.1%54.1%

52.3% together, 50.5% for him apart and 47.0% for Carlson apart. Carlson was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Carlson 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

67 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 16 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 57% of his shots came from inside twenty feet.