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.

34

Stephen Halliday

Ottawa Senators Center

6-4, 30 games, and 5 points in his last 10.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2025-26OTT304711020003411.88:31
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—304711020003411.88:31

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

4 goals and 7 assists in 30 games — 11 points, even in plus-minus, at 8:31 a night with 2 penalty minutes. His first NHL season, at 23.

The Finesse Game

44 unblocked attempts, 4 goals, median 21 feet with 48 per cent from inside 20 — good ice, small sample, and a fair conversion.

7 assists in 30 games from 8 and a half minutes a night is the encouraging half. He was a prolific college playmaker and the passing is the reason he is here.

The Physical Game

6-4, 214, and he protects pucks well below the goal line. 2 penalty minutes in 30 games is a strikingly clean season.

The skating is the limitation and at this size it is the thing that decides whether there is a career.

The Intangibles

57.0 per cent of the expected goals, 95th percentile, and 56.6 per cent of the shot attempts, 94th, in 205 minutes.

200 minutes is far too small to mean anything, and it comes on the best possession structure in the league outside Carolina.

5 points in his last 10, 4 of them goals. He is 24, a 104th overall pick, and there is a useful third-line centre in here if the feet allow it. Ask again after 50 games.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 205 minutes

Expected goals
57%
96th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
56.6%
94th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 9 for, 6 against. Expected: 8.5 and 6.5.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
33rd
Numbers
96th

The numbers rank him 63 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 69 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 · 30 games

Top speed
22.3 mph
55th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
1.33 a game

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

Distance
1.36 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
81.8 mph
30th 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 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

5

points in his last 10 games — 4 goals, 1 assists, 18 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 205 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
OTT took 54.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.0% — 2.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
205 minutes at five-on-five — 0th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nick Cousins57.2%56.8%53.5%
Jordan Spence64.0%52.0%61.0%
Tyler Kleven57.6%56.7%55.0%

57.2% together, 56.8% for him apart and 53.5% for Cousins apart. Cousins was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Cousins 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

44 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 13 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.