Armchair Hockey Scout

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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.

Thomas Chabot

Photo by All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0

Thomas Chabot

Ottawa Senators Defense #72

569 games, and the quiet half of a very good blue line.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2016-17OTT1000-2000010.07:09
2017-18OTT6391625-1214000949.617:31
2018-19OTT70144155-12321121857.624:17
2019-20OTT7163339-18420001863.226:00
2020-21OTT4962531-15361011205.026:17
2021-22OTT5973138-3261011734.026:12
2022-23OTT68113041-11525001656.724:58
2023-24OTT5192130-3221001187.623:03
2024-25OTT8093645+17241011795.023:01
2025-26OTT5772431+622210997.122:35
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—56978257335-53270122513205.923:43

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

7 goals and 24 assists in 57 games — 31 points, plus-6, at 22:35 a night. 25 games missed.

The Finesse Game

The skating is still the best part — he leaves the zone with the puck and can carry it through a neutral-zone trap without help.

24 assists in 57 games is a good rate. The shot is a point shot: 149 unblocked attempts from a median of 50 feet, 7 goals.

335 points in 569 games is a genuine offensive defenceman’s career, most of it produced on much worse teams than this one.

The Physical Game

6-1, 200, and he defends with feet rather than force. 22 penalty minutes in 57 games.

The durability is the concern and has been for years: 25 games missed, and this is the fourth season in 6 he has failed to reach 70.

The Intangibles

54.4 per cent of the expected goals, 85th percentile, and 52.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 76th, across 1,000 minutes.

The goals went 60-55 in his favour.

6 points in his last 10. He is 29 and, on a blue line with Sanderson at the 92nd percentile, Spence at the 99th and Zub playing the most minutes, he is now the fourth-most important defenceman on his own team. That is not a criticism of him.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,034 minutes

Expected goals
54.4%
85th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
52.3%
76th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 60 for, 55 against. Expected: 45.9 and 38.4.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
61st
Numbers
85th

The numbers rank him 24 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 — 74 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 · 57 games

Top speed
22.3 mph
73rd pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6

Bursts over 20 mph
1.00 a game

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

Distance
3.38 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
93.6 mph
71st pct

one shot; the league's average best is 88.9

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

6

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 5 assists, 18 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1034 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 54.4% — 0.5 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third pair, 1,034 minutes at five-on-five — 64th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Nick Jensen52.6%56.7%52.4%
Tim Stützle53.2%55.0%54.6%
Dylan Cozens56.6%53.5%60.7%

52.6% together, 56.7% for him apart and 52.4% for Jensen apart. He was better away from Jensen, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Jensen.

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

149 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 32 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 66% from beyond forty.