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.
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1

Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen

Buffalo Sabres Goaltender

Six foot five, a .9102 with five shutouts, and the first season of his career in which the crease was his.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21BUF4130143.880149.906
2021-22BUF9252232.740277.917
2022-23BUF33171141153.6101054.891
2023-24BUF54272241322.5751470.910
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—1004741102842.9852950.904

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

27-22-4 with a .9102, a 2.57 average and 5 shutouts in 54 games, facing 1,470 shots.

The club’s goaltending came in 16.4 goals better than the chances faced, 6th in the league, behind a defence that was 25th at suppressing them. He is the reason.

He had a career .9037 across 100 games coming into it, and had never played more than twenty-five in a season.

The Physical Game

6-5 and 223, and he plays deep and large. He sets at the top of the crease and lets the frame take the top of the net away rather than moving for it, and he is square almost without exception.

The rebound control is good — a club that concedes 159 goals at five-on-five against an expectation of 175.4 is not giving up many second chances, and behind the 25th-ranked chance suppression in the league that is entirely him.

The lateral recovery is the cost of the style and it is a real one. He is beaten across the slot more often than a smaller goaltender would be, and a play that moves side to side is the way to get him.

The Mental Game

Fifty-four games on a club that finished twenty-second, more than a third of them lost, and the save percentage did not fall away in the second half.

He is 25 and had spent four seasons as somebody’s second goaltender. Five shutouts in a first real season is the thing to keep hold of.

The Intangibles

Fifty-fourth overall in 2017, out of Finland, and 100 games and a career .9037 before this season.

A club that was helped by its goaltending and finished twenty-second anyway has one honest asset on this page, and it is him. He is 25, the crease is his, and the number to beat next year is his own.

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

    “**6-5 and 223, and he plays deep and large.** He sets at the top of the crease and lets the frame take the top of the net away rather than moving for it, and he is square almost without exception.”

  • rebound-controla strength· where the second chance ends up

    “**The rebound control is good** — a club that concedes 159 goals at five-on-five against an expectation of 175.4 is not giving up many second chances, and behind the 25th-ranked chance suppression in the league that is entirely him.”

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

    “**The lateral recovery is the cost of the style and it is a real one.** He is beaten across the slot more often than a smaller goaltender would be, and a play that moves side to side is the way to get him.”