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.

Tom Wilson

Photo by All-Pro Reels from District of Columbia, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0

Tom Wilson

Washington Capitals Right Wing #43

907 games, 30 goals, and 117 penalty minutes.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2013-14WSH823710+1151100634.87:56
2014-15WSH6741317-1172000795.110:56
2015-16WSH8271623+3163001997.112:55
2016-17WSH8271219+9133000957.412:56
2017-18WSH78142135+1018701112311.415:59
2018-19WSH63221840+1112832213016.918:09
2019-20WSH68212344-39351515413.618:16
2020-21WSH47132033+1964148315.716:32
2021-22WSH78242852+139842515115.918:35
2022-23WSH3313922-13784018215.817:37
2023-24WSH74181735-1913352316910.718:06
2024-25WSH81333265+20100112616919.518:44
2025-26WSH72303262+1511771315319.619:28
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—907209248457+471649441231155013.515:39

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

30 goals and 32 assists in 72 games — 62 points, plus-15, at 19:28 a night with 7 power-play goals and 117 penalty minutes.

His 907th career game and his 457th point.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is very good. 229 unblocked attempts with 53 per cent from inside 20 feet and a median of 19, and 30 goals came out of it.

30 goals is a career high at 32 and it comes from ice that a 6-4 winger who fights can simply take.

32 assists is a genuine rate and 457 points in 907 games is a considerably better career than the reputation suggests.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 225 pounds, and 117 penalty minutes — the third-highest total in the league.

He is the most feared hitter of his generation, has been suspended repeatedly, and has built the second half of his career on being able to score as well as all that.

The Intangibles

55.2 per cent of the expected goals, 88th percentile, and 53.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 85th — second on the club to Lapierre on both — across 985 minutes, with the chances 47.5 to 38.6 in his favour.

10 points in his last 10, 5 of them goals.

He is 32, a Stanley Cup, and the rare heavyweight who is also his club’s best possession forward. That combination is what a checking series is made of.

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.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data

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.

  • drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there

    55.2% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 47.6% for his club in the minutes he sat: +7.6, 97th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 985 minutes

Expected goals
55.2%
89th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
53.7%
85th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 52 for, 35 against. Expected: 47.5 and 38.6.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
98th
Numbers
89th

The two rank him within 9 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

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 — 84 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 · 72 games

Top speed
22.8 mph
78th pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
2.25 a game

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

Distance
3.02 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
91.2 mph
88th 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

10

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

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 985 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
WSH took 49.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 55.2% — 5.7 above the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 985 minutes at five-on-five — 59th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Aliaksei Protas56.3%52.8%43.5%
Jakob Chychrun59.3%51.9%46.8%
Matt Roy57.4%53.9%44.1%

56.3% together, 52.8% for him apart and 43.5% for Protas apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

229 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 30 of them goals. His median goal came from 18 feet. 54% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.