Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2022-23 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 2022-23 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
← 2022-23 edition

This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

35

Thatcher Demko

Vancouver Canucks Goaltender

A .9146 that is 14th of fifty-three, in front of the best goaltending rating in the league.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2017-18VAN110043.91030.867
2018-19VAN9431252.810288.913
2019-20VAN2713102783.060822.905
2020-21VAN3516181992.8511164.915
2021-22VAN64332271682.7211967.915
2022-23 so far——————————
Career—1366753113742.8424271.912

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

64 games, 33-22-7, a .9146 save percentage and a 2.72 goals-against, one shutout on 1,967 shots — the 3rd-most faced by any of the 53 goaltenders who played twenty-five games. That .9146 is 14th of the same 53. Thirty-sixth overall in 2014 by Vancouver — the second round — five seasons, 136 games.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 192 pounds, and 26 years old.

Five seasons and 4,271 career shots at .9124, and the two years that mean anything read .9149 across 1,164 shots and .9146 across 1,967.

Two hundredths of a point apart across three thousand shots, with the second sample nearly twice the size of the first. That is as close to a settled number as a 26-year-old can have.

Sixty-four games is a career high by twenty-nine and the first time he has faced more than 1,200 shots.

The Mental Game

Vancouver rated 1st in the league in goaltending at plus-23.5 goals saved above expectation. No crease in hockey was worth more than this one, and he played sixty-four of the eighty-two.

The five-on-five ledger says how. The club conceded 143 goals against an expectation of 166.5 — twenty-three and a half fewer than the model asked, which matches the club rating almost exactly.

And the structure in front is the point. Vancouver finished 16th in attempt share, 19th in chances and 26th in the league on the penalty kill, at 7.305 expected goals against per 60. Only three clubs conceded more dangerous chances per minute short-handed.

A .9146 behind that is worth a great deal more than a .9146 behind Toronto, and the goals-saved model is what says so.

The Intangibles

Nothing here measures rebound control, how he tracks a puck through traffic, or what he does on a second chance.

What it measures is 4,271 shots at .9124, two consecutive seasons within two hundredths of each other, and a season that produced the most valuable goaltending in the league.

Ninety-two points came out of the 16th-best attempt share in hockey, the 19th-best chance share and the 4th-worst penalty kill. The crease is why, and a club that leans this heavily on one 26-year-old is one injury from finishing 25th.