Armchair Hockey Scout

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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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41

Vitek Vanecek

San Jose Sharks Goaltender

Ninety-one career wins against 42 losses, on a career save percentage of .9051.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21WSH3721104952.6921031.908
2021-22WSH42201261032.6741117.908
2022-23NJD52331141192.4531333.911
2023-24NJD321793953.180862.890
2024-25 so far——————————
Career—1639142174122.7094343.905

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

32 games with New Jersey, 17-9-3 with an .8898 and a 3.18, no shutouts, facing 862 shots.

The .8898 was the sixth-lowest save percentage of any goaltender who played twenty-five games, and he still won 17 of 32. That combination is the whole of his career in one line.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 184.

He is light for the modern position and plays higher in his crease than most, cutting the angle down rather than waiting to be shot at. The lateral work is quick and the recovery is good, and the trouble comes on the second and third shot when he has already committed to the first.

The Mental Game

A career .9051 across 163 games, with 91 wins against 42 losses.

Ninety-one wins in 163 games from a goaltender who has never had a .912 season is a record built almost entirely on the clubs in front of him. He does not lose games on his own and he does not steal many either; what he offers is thirty-five starts at league-average, which on this roster is worth having.

The Intangibles

Thirty-ninth overall in 2014 by Washington, four seasons, and San Jose will be his third organisation.

Nine career shutouts and 33 wins in a season two years ago. He is 28 and about to face more shots than he ever has.

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-aggressivea strength· meets the shooter at the top of the crease

    “He is light for the modern position and plays higher in his crease than most, cutting the angle down rather than waiting to be shot at.”

  • rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up

    “The lateral work is quick and the recovery is good, and the trouble comes on the second and third shot when he has already committed to the first.”