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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41

Vitek Vanecek

Utah Mammoth Goaltender

An .884 across San Jose and Florida, and a Stanley Cup ring he did not play a minute for.

SeasonTeamGPWLOTLGAGAASOSASV%
2020-21WSH3721104952.6921031.908
2021-22WSH42201261032.6741117.908
2022-23NJD52331141192.4531333.911
2023-24NJD321793953.180862.890
2024-25SJS/FLA255144843.621724.884
2025-26 so far——————————
Career—1889656214962.83105067.902

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

5-14-4 in 25 games across San Jose and Florida with an .884, a 3.62 average and 1 shutout, facing 724 shots.

It is the worst save percentage of his career by a distance and most of it was posted on the worst club in the league. He was traded to Florida at the deadline and won a Stanley Cup as the third goaltender.

The Physical Game

6-2 and 184 and small for the modern position, which means the technique has to be exact. He plays a conventional depth and he relies on quickness rather than on covering the net with his body.

The rebound control is the weakness and it has been at every stop — pucks come off him into the slot. The lateral recovery is decent and the glove is ordinary. He does not handle the puck well.

The Mental Game

He was a 20-game winner in Washington and a starter in New Jersey, and the save percentages have gone .9084, .9107, .9111, .8901, .884 — a straight line downwards across five seasons.

He is not being asked to be a starter here and he has not been one for two years, and the record says that is the correct assessment.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick of Washington in 2014 and 188 games with a career .9021 across four organisations.

He is 29 and Utah signed him in the summer to play thirty games behind a man who has just had the first good season of his career.

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.

  • 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.

  • plays-deeppresent and ordinary· takes the net away by occupying it

    “He plays a conventional depth and he relies on quickness rather than on covering the net with his body.”

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

    “**The rebound control is the weakness** and it has been at every stop — pucks come off him into the slot.”

  • lateral-recoverypresent and ordinary· post-to-post, and across the slot

    “The lateral recovery is decent and the glove is ordinary.”

  • puck-handlinghe lacks it· starts the breakout himself

    “He does not handle the puck well.”