Armchair Hockey Scout

Ask the book

2023-24 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 2023-24 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.
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Arizona Coyotes

Central Division, Western Conference · 21 reports in the 2023-24 edition.

This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read, written from that season alone. The book has no later edition of this club.

The read

the numbers, and the eye

More shorthanded time than any club in the league and the 31st-ranked penalty kill behind it — and a rebuild that spent the summer buying right-shot defencemen.

Who this names 11 of 21 on the roster · 62% of their five-on-five minutes details

Both columns above are searched, and a name counts on the same terms the page links it: in full always, by surname only when one man in the edition wears it. Nothing here says who ought to be named — only who was, so the weighting can be seen rather than guessed at.

Not named here: Travis Boyd, Joshua Brown, Lawson Crouse, Connor Ingram, Jack McBain, Liam O'Brien, Nick Schmaltz, Victor Soderstrom, Juuso Välimäki, Karel Vejmelka.

What the Quant Says

28-40-14, 70 points, 27th in the league and seventh in the Central.

228 goals for, 28th. 299 against, 25th. Twenty-ninth at creating chances at even strength, 24th at suppressing them, 29th on the power play and 31st on the penalty kill, over the most shorthanded time of any club in the league.

At five-on-five: 151 goals scored against 143.0 expected, and 180 conceded against 171.6. The finishing was 9th and the goaltending 22nd. Eight goals gained at one end and eight and a half lost at the other, which is a fair description of a 70-point season.

Clayton Keller had 86 points at 5-10 and 175 pounds, 21st in scoring in this book, playing home games in a college rink.

Mathew Dumba, Sean Durzi, Jason Zucker, Alexander Kerfoot, Nick Bjugstad and Troy Stecher all arrive. Jakob Chychrun, Shayne Gostisbehere, Christian Fischer and Ivan Prosvetov do not.

Six of this year's regulars are 24 or younger, and the summer's business was four defencemen and two veteran forwards on short money. That is a rebuild buying time rather than buying wins, and the honest test of it is whether Guenther, Maccelli and Hayton are better in April than they were in October.

What the Scout Says

An eighty-six-point captain at 175 pounds, and a defence corps rebuilt twice in eighteen months.

Clayton Keller was seventh overall in 2016 and has 342 points in 442 games, all of them here. J.J. Moser played 21 minutes a night at 23. Mathew Dumba arrives with 598 games and the 99th percentile of shot velocity.

This is a club with one player who would start for anybody and a large number who would not, and it has spent the summer making sure the young ones are not asked to do it alone. The building is small, the payroll is small, and the plan is legible.

The roster

Evidence 0 Full 19 Light 2 No record

No measured season behind two of them: Connor Ingram and Karel Vejmelka. Their pages carry an older stat line and a judgment, and nothing from that season.

72

Nick Bjugstad

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

C · Arizona Coyotes

Six-foot-six, the 82nd percentile in top speed, and a plus-13 on two bad teams.
72

Travis Boyd

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

C · Arizona Coyotes

A minus-32, the first percentile in shot velocity, and fifteen goals from fifteen feet.
44

Joshua Brown

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

D · Arizona Coyotes

Six-foot-five, 221 career penalty minutes, and the sixth percentile in five-on-five share.
67

Lawson Crouse

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

LW · Arizona Coyotes

Twenty-four goals at 6-4, from a man drafted eleventh overall to hit people.
24

Mathew Dumba

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

D · Arizona Coyotes

A shot measured at 101.6 mph, four goals, and thirteen goals of scoring that never arrived.
5

Sean Durzi

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

D · Arizona Coyotes

The 94th percentile in top speed and the 13th in sprints — fast, and almost never in a hurry.
11

Dylan Guenther

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing, only 375 five-on-five minutes. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

RW · Arizona Coyotes

Ninth overall, six goals in thirty-three games at nineteen, and four of them on the power play.
27

Barrett Hayton

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

C · Arizona Coyotes

Nineteen goals on the sixth-percentile shot, all of them from inside the dots.
39

Connor Ingram

Evidence behind this report: No record. No five-on-five record — Ingram did not play a measured season. Everything on the page is an older line and a judgment.

G · Arizona Coyotes

A .907 in twenty-seven games, and a career that stopped for two years while he got well.
9

Clayton Keller

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

RW · Arizona Coyotes

Eighty-six points at 5-10 and 175 pounds, on a club playing its home games in a college rink.
15

Alexander Kerfoot

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

C · Arizona Coyotes

The 94th percentile in sprints over twenty miles an hour and the 9th in shot velocity.
63

Matias Maccelli

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

LW · Arizona Coyotes

Thirty-eight assists on eleven goals, from a fourth-round pick, in a first full season.
22

Jack McBain

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

C · Arizona Coyotes

Six-foot-four, sixty-four penalty minutes, and the sixth percentile in shot velocity.
90

J.J. Moser

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

D · Arizona Coyotes

Twenty-one minutes a night at twenty-three, on a second-round pick nobody else wanted.
38

Liam O'Brien

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

C · Arizona Coyotes

Two hundred and eighty-eight penalty minutes in a hundred and twenty-four games, and nine years in the minors to get them.
8

Nick Schmaltz

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

C · Arizona Coyotes

Fifty-eight points in sixty-three games, and the sixth percentile in shot velocity.
29

Victor Soderstrom

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing, only 443 five-on-five minutes. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

D · Arizona Coyotes

Eleventh overall in 2019, fifty NHL games in four seasons, and one goal.
28

Troy Stecher

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

D · Arizona Coyotes

Undrafted, 5-10, 440 NHL games, and the 30th percentile in top speed.
4

Juuso Välimäki

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

D · Arizona Coyotes

A waiver claim who led the club's defencemen in five-on-five share and scored thirty assists.
70

Karel Vejmelka

Evidence behind this report: No record. No five-on-five record — Vejmelka did not play a measured season. Everything on the page is an older line and a judgment.

G · Arizona Coyotes

A .899 on 1,670 shots behind the 29th-best defence in hockey.
17

Jason Zucker

Evidence behind this report: Light. Thinner than most: part of the record is missing. The page is honest about what it has, but it is a smaller sample than the book's norm.

LW · Arizona Coyotes

Twenty-seven goals at thirty-one, and the best five-on-five share of any forward on the club he left.

How they were used

2022-23 · 82 games

Measured from shift charts at five-on-five, not projected. Units are built from the strongest partnership outward and ordered by how much they were used; the percentage is the share of the first player’s five-on-five ice time spent alongside each linemate. A low number means the club never settled on a combination. Players who have gone are marked — either to another club, or off an NHL roster altogether, which covers retirement and an unsigned summer alike.

Forwards

First line

R Clayton Keller 1316m
C Barrett Hayton 49%
C Nick Schmaltz 64%

Second line

R Christian Fischer now DET 35%
C Travis Boyd 1074m
L Nick Ritchie off the roster 22%

Third line

L Lawson Crouse 1041m
C Nick Bjugstad 51%
L Matias Maccelli 58%

Fourth line

C Jack McBain 947m
C Liam O'Brien 27%
R Zack Kassian off the roster 19%

Defence

First pair

D J.J. Moser 1287m
D Patrik Nemeth off the roster 41%

Second pair

D Juuso Välimäki 1197m
D Joshua Brown 18%

Third pair

D Shayne Gostisbehere now DET 931m
D Jakob Chychrun now OTT 58%

Goaltending

By games played

G Karel Vejmelka 50 GP
G Connor Ingram 27 GP
G Ivan Prosvetov now COL 7 GP