Armchair Hockey Scout Beta
72

Travis Boyd

Arizona Coyotes Center

A minus-32, the first percentile in shot velocity, and fifteen goals from fifteen feet.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18WSH8011+2200020.08:50
2018-19WSH5351520+660013514.39:50
2019-20WSH243710+920002611.511:45
2020-21TOR/VAN395510-521002321.710:44
2021-22ARI74171835-10342028819.316:31
2022-23ARI82151934-32262039416.016:32
2023-24 so far
Career2804565110-307250626816.813:49

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 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

15 goals and 19 assists in 82 games — 34 points at 16:32 a night, minus-32, on 94 shots, converting at 15.96 per cent, and 26 penalty minutes.

The minus-32 is the worst on the club and among the worst in the league. 41.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,074 minutes, the 7th percentile, and his ice went 39-62 against an expectation of 36.26-51.03 — eleven more goals conceded than the chances predicted, on top of chances that were already bad.

The Finesse Game

94 attempts at a median of 15 feet, with 64 per cent from inside 20 — the closest shot chart on the roster and one of the closest in the book.

The shot itself is measured at 77.1 mph, the 1st percentile in the league, and he converted at 15.96 per cent anyway. Those two facts only sit together one way: he scores from so close that velocity stops mattering. 45 goals in 280 career games says it is a real if narrow skill.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 190, and there is no physical game — 72 penalty minutes in 280 career games.

The skating is the ceiling and it is a hard one: 21.0 mph is the 4th percentile and 0.3 bursts over twenty a game is the 12th. He is among the slowest forwards in the league, and a fourth-line centre who cannot skate and cannot shoot hard is playing on borrowed time however well he reads the ice.

The Intangibles

A hundred and seventy-seventh overall in 2011, six seasons, four clubs, and 110 points in 280 games from a sixth-round pick — a career built entirely on being useful.

He is 30. The minus-32 will follow him and it should not: he was handed the club’s hardest even-strength assignment behind a defence corps that was rebuilt twice mid-season. That does not make him good; it makes the number unfair.

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
  • 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.

  • slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored

    72.2% of his attempts in the slot, 99th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

  • net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips

    “he scores from so close that velocity stops mattering”

  • punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “there is no physical game — 72 penalty minutes in 280 career games”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,074 minutes

Expected goals
41.5%
7th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43%
9th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 39 for, 62 against. Expected: 36.3 and 51.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
8th
Numbers
7th

The two rank him within 1 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 58 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 52 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 1074 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, 2022-23

The club
ARI took 45.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.5% — 4.0 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 1,074 minutes at five-on-five — 67th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Clayton Keller41.7%41.4%53.5%
Christian Fischer43.0%40.7%43.0%
Shayne Gostisbehere42.3%41.2%54.9%

41.7% together, 41.4% for him apart and 53.5% for Keller apart. Keller was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more 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

133 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 15 of them goals. His median goal came from 12 feet. 65% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 11% from beyond forty.