Armchair Hockey Scout

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2025-26 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 2025-26 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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90

Victor Mancini

Vancouver Canucks Defense

Two hundred and twenty-nine pounds at 22, a fifth-round pick, and the worst chance share in this chapter.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2024-25NYR/VAN31268-910100277.415:18
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—31268-910100277.415:18

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

2 goals and 6 assists in 31 games across New York and Vancouver — 8 points at 15:18 a night, minus-9, with 10 penalty minutes.

39.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 3rd percentile — the worst mark of anybody in this chapter, across 401 minutes. His ice went 12-19 against an expectation of 13.50-20.45, which is a third pairing that conceded a great deal fewer goals than the chances predicted and was still badly outplayed.

The Finesse Game

27 attempts in 31 games at a median of 55 feet with 73 per cent from beyond 40 and 14 per cent from inside 20, which is a high share for a defenceman and says he joins the rush.

6 assists in 31 games. The first pass is simple and the decisions under pressure are the unfinished part, which at 22 is expected.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 229 pounds and among the heaviest defencemen in the league. He clears the front of his own net, he finishes checks that hurt, and he is not moved.

10 penalty minutes in 31 games is a low rate. He is not an agitator and the physicality is structural rather than provocative.

The Intangibles

A fifth-round pick of the Rangers in 2022 out of Omaha, and 31 NHL games in.

He was traded to Vancouver in January with Filip Chytil and a first-round pick for J.T. Miller. He is 23, and on a blue line whose best two men weigh 180 and 190 pounds he is the most interesting body in the system.

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
  • ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
  • 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.

  • clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net

    “He clears the front of his own net, he finishes checks that hurt, and he is not moved.”

  • punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally

    “He clears the front of his own net, he finishes checks that hurt, and he is not moved.”

  • hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “He clears the front of his own net, he finishes checks that hurt, and he is not moved.”

  • agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation

    “He is not an agitator and the physicality is structural rather than provocative.”

  • transitionpresent and ordinary· carries it out; gains the line under control

    “The first pass is simple and the decisions under pressure are the unfinished part, which at 22 is expected.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 401 minutes

Expected goals
39.8%
2nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
39.3%
0th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 12 for, 19 against. Expected: 13.5 and 20.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
21st
Numbers
2nd

The two rank him within 19 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 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, 2024-25 · 31 games

Top speed
21.7 mph
51st pct

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

Bursts over 20 mph
0.45 a game

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

Distance
2.13 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
91.3 mph
55th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 89.7

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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 with NYR · 218 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, 2024-25

The club
VAN took 49.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 39.8% — 9.3 below the club he did it on.
The role
401 minutes at five-on-five — 11th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Zac Jones42.3%38.8%48.7%
Derek Forbort47.2%38.1%44.6%
Filip Chytil55.2%34.7%52.1%

42.3% together, 38.8% for him apart and 48.7% for Jones apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Jones and did not follow 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

44 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 62 feet. 14% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.