Armchair Hockey Scout

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2022-23 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 2022-23 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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41

Vitek Vanecek

New Jersey Devils Goaltender

Two NHL seasons at .9079 and .9078 — arriving to fix the worst-rated goaltending in the league.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21WSH3721104952.6921031.908
2021-22WSH42201261032.6741117.908
2022-23 so far——————————
Career—794122101982.6862148.908

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 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

42 games for Washington, 20-12-6, a .9078 save percentage and a 2.67 goals-against, four shutouts on 1,117 shots. That is 29th of the 53 goaltenders who played twenty-five games — the exact middle.

Thirty-ninth overall in 2014, and 79 NHL games at 26.

The Physical Game

The two-season record is unusually tidy. .9079 in 2020-21 and .9078 in 2021-22. Career .9078 across 2,148 shots.

Two seasons agreeing to four decimal places is not proof of a level, but it is the least ambiguous evidence any goaltender in this batch offers. A league-average starter is roughly .910; he has now produced almost exactly that twice.

The Mental Game

The move is what matters. New Jersey rated 32nd in the league in goaltending at minus-43.3 goals saved below expectation — the worst figure in hockey by a distance, on a club that finished 7th in expected goals per 60 at even strength and 12th in chance share.

Mackenzie Blackwood posted .8919, Nico Daws .8930, Jonathan Bernier and Jon Gillies filled in. Four goaltenders, none above .893.

A club whose skaters produced a top-twelve process and whose crease cost it forty-three goals has acquired a .9078. That is not a star and it is roughly two full wins’ worth of improvement over what it replaces, before anything else changes.

The Intangibles

He is 26 with 79 games behind him, moving from a playoff club to a rebuilding one.

Nothing here measures technique, glove or rebound control. What it measures is that the largest single problem on this roster is a number he would improve simply by being ordinary, and ordinary is the one thing his record reliably says he is.