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.
← 2024-25 edition

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

74

Stuart Skinner

Edmonton Oilers Goaltender

Thirty-six wins for the club he grew up in, and a save percentage a little below his own career rate.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21EDM110055.03038.868
2021-22EDM13660322.621367.913
2022-23EDM50291451332.7511536.913
2023-24EDM59361651472.6221553.905
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—1237236103172.6943494.909

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

59 games, 36-16-5 with a .9053 and a 2.62, facing 1,553 shots, with 2 shutouts.

His career line across 123 games is a .9093 and a 2.69, so last season was a little below his own standard rather than a collapse. The club’s goaltending came in 9.1 goals better than the chances it faced, tenth in the league, and he faced most of them.

The Physical Game

He is 6-4 and 215 and plays deep in his crease, covering the net with size rather than movement.

It is an economical way to play and it depends on seeing the first shot. His rebound control is the weakness: the puck comes off him into the slot more often than it should, and behind a club that concedes as little as this one does, a disproportionate share of the dangerous chances he faces are the second ones. The lateral recovery is ordinary and a cross-ice pass moves him late.

The Mental Game

He does not chase the game after a bad goal, which on this roster is worth more than it sounds.

Thirty-six wins is a number that belongs mostly to the club in front of him and he has never pretended otherwise in public. The question that follows him is whether a goaltender who is average in October is still average in May, and two playoff runs have not answered it.

The Intangibles

A third-round pick in 2017, born in Edmonton, and he has played every one of his 123 National Hockey League games for Edmonton. That is a pleasant story and no help at all in a seven-game series.

He is 25 and a .9093 career save percentage is exactly league-average. On a club this good at suppressing chances, league-average is enough for 104 points and has not yet been enough for anything else.

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

    “He is 6-4 and 215 and plays deep in his crease, covering the net with size rather than movement.”

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “His rebound control is the weakness: the puck comes off him into the slot more often than it should, and behind a club that concedes as little as this one does, a disproportionate share of the dangerous chances he faces are the second ones.”

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

    “The lateral recovery is ordinary and a cross-ice pass moves him late.”

  • plays-aggressivehe lacks it· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “He is 6-4 and 215 and plays deep in his crease, covering the net with size rather than movement.”