Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2026-27 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 2026-27 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

Zachary Aston-Reese

Photo by Michael Miller, CC BY-SA 4.0

Zachary Aston-Reese

Philadelphia Flyers Left Wing #21

416 games, undrafted, and 5 points.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18PIT16426+220012020.011:23
2018-19PIT438917+12260117610.513:39
2019-20PIT576713+628010986.114:25
2020-21PIT459615+10150107911.414:37
2021-22PIT/ANA6951015+928000786.413:02
2022-23TOR7710414-6250028911.210:56
2023-24DET30000200010.05:09
2024-25CBJ7961117-15270011015.913:27
2025-26CBJ27145-112000175.99:44
2026-27 so far—————————————
Career—4164953102+171650355598.812:49

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

1 goal and 4 assists in 27 games — 5 points, minus-1, at 9:44 a night with 12 penalty minutes. His 5-on-5 work was done in Columbus.

The Finesse Game

Almost nothing. 28 unblocked attempts, 1 goal, median 26 feet with 43 per cent from inside 20.

102 points in 416 career games is the rate of a fourth-line checker who occasionally scores, and at 32 the occasionally has stopped.

The Physical Game

6-1, 203, and he blocks shots and finishes checks. 12 penalty minutes in 27 games.

The physical commitment is the whole career — undrafted out of Northeastern, and 416 NHL games out of being willing to do the parts nobody wants.

The Intangibles

45.9 per cent of the expected goals, 21st percentile, in 244 minutes — a small sample and a poor one.

He is 32 and joins a Philadelphia roster already carrying Acciari, Grundstrom and Aston-Reese types in quantity. This is a thirteenth-forward job and the page cannot honestly say more.

Philadelphia finished 8th on the penalty kill. He will kill some of them.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 244 minutes

Expected goals
45.9%
21st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
45.8%
18th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 6 for, 7 against. Expected: 7.6 and 8.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted
Report
19th
Numbers
21st

The two rank him within 2 points of one another. It was written with these numbers on screen, so the agreement is not corroboration — the arithmetic is on both sides of it.

Both bars are percentiles among the 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 66 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, 2025-26 · 27 games

Top speed
22.2 mph
49th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
1.70 a game

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

Distance
1.56 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
82.8 mph
35th pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.6

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.

Recent form

Last 15 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

3

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 2 assists, 12 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 with CBJ · 244 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, 2025-26

The club
CBJ took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.9% — 5.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
244 minutes at five-on-five — 2nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Isac Lundeström47.0%44.6%44.8%
Ivan Provorov44.4%46.9%51.5%
Zach Werenski47.7%44.9%55.3%

47.0% together, 44.6% for him apart and 44.8% for Lundeström apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

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

28 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 1 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 43% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 32% from beyond forty.