Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

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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30

Spencer Knight

Chicago Blackhawks Goaltender

A .9011 across 38 games, and the goaltender the club got for Seth Jones.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21FLA440082.32099.919
2021-22FLA321993812.792876.907
2022-23FLA21983623.181627.901
2024-25FLA/CHI38171631002.7221011.901
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—95493392512.8352613.904

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

17-16-3 in 38 games, .9011 with a 2.72 average and 2 shutouts on 1,011 shots between Florida and Chicago.

The number is below average and it is 32 points of save percentage clear of the man who played 36 games for Chicago in the same season. That is the useful comparison.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 191, and the game is structural rather than athletic — deep enough to take the top of the net away, square, and reliant on being in the right place rather than getting there.

At his best that is an efficient, calm way to play. The rebound control is good. The weakness is a scramble, where the recovery is slower than the modern game demands, and behind a club conceding as many second chances as Chicago that is the exact wrong flaw.

The Mental Game

He stepped away from hockey in 2022 to enter the player assistance programme, returned, and has rebuilt a career from being a first-round pick whose future was uncertain to being an NHL starter at 24.

That is a health matter rather than a character one and it should be read as such. What can be said about the hockey is that there is no record of a bad night becoming a bad stretch.

The Intangibles

A first-round pick, a Cup on the roster in Florida without playing, and a trade at 23 that made him the centrepiece of a rebuild’s crease.

The honest reading is that he has never had a full season as a number one and the club has committed to him having one. A .9011 behind a defence that finishes 29th at suppressing chances is not a verdict on him; the next 55 games will be.

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-deepa strength· takes the net away by occupying it

    “deep enough to take the top of the net away, square, and reliant on being in the right place rather than getting there.”

  • rebound-controla strength· where the second chance ends up

    “The rebound control is good.”

  • lateral-recoveryhe lacks it· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “The weakness is a scramble, where the recovery is slower than the modern game demands, and behind a club conceding as many second chances as Chicago that is the exact wrong flaw.”