Esa Lindell
Dallas Stars Defense #23
Plus 30, 766 games, and the quietest important player in this book.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-16 | DAL | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 14:03 |
| 2016-17 | DAL | 73 | 6 | 12 | 18 | +8 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 99 | 6.1 | 21:52 |
| 2017-18 | DAL | 80 | 7 | 20 | 27 | +19 | 24 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 137 | 5.1 | 22:05 |
| 2018-19 | DAL | 82 | 11 | 21 | 32 | +14 | 33 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 132 | 8.3 | 24:20 |
| 2019-20 | DAL | 69 | 3 | 20 | 23 | +5 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 98 | 3.1 | 23:25 |
| 2020-21 | DAL | 56 | 5 | 11 | 16 | +11 | 19 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 100 | 5.0 | 23:11 |
| 2021-22 | DAL | 76 | 4 | 21 | 25 | +4 | 12 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 136 | 2.9 | 22:03 |
| 2022-23 | DAL | 82 | 8 | 16 | 24 | +29 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 116 | 6.9 | 19:55 |
| 2023-24 | DAL | 82 | 5 | 21 | 26 | +17 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 114 | 4.4 | 20:28 |
| 2024-25 | DAL | 80 | 5 | 21 | 26 | +34 | 14 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 99 | 5.1 | 22:11 |
| 2025-26 | DAL | 82 | 6 | 26 | 32 | +30 | 20 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 83 | 7.2 | 23:14 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 766 | 60 | 189 | 249 | +168 | 178 | 9 | 4 | 8 | 1116 | 5.4 | 22:11 |
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
6 goals and 26 assists in all 82 games — 32 points, plus-30, at 23:14 a night with 1,487 5-on-5 minutes, the most on the club.
The Finesse Game
Deliberately minimal. 120 unblocked attempts from a median of 44 feet, 12 per cent inside 20, 6 goals. 60 goals in 766 career games.
He makes the first pass and does not carry. 26 assists from that ice time is a low number and nobody in the organisation minds.
The Physical Game
6-3, 217, and he defends by taking away time rather than by hitting. 20 penalty minutes across 82 games of the hardest assignment on a top defensive team is a remarkable figure.
He blocks shots, he kills penalties on the eighth-ranked unit in the league, and he does not get beaten wide.
The Intangibles
54.3 per cent of the expected goals, 84th percentile — against only 48.6 per cent of the shot attempts, 36th. That gap is the entire Dallas method: let them have the puck on the perimeter, concede nothing from the middle, and win the game that is actually being played.
Nobody in this book illustrates the difference between volume and danger better.
He is 32, a third-round pick, in his eleventh season with 1 club, and he has never been an All-Star and never will be. Dallas finished 7th in the league in even-strength expected goals against, and he played more of them than anyone.
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.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
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.
- hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
3 of 67 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.5%, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
54.3% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 48.3% for his club in the minutes he sat: +6.0, 96th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,487 minutes
- Expected goals
- 54.3%
- 84th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.6%
- 42nd pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 71 for, 47 against. Expected: 59.2 and 49.8.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe numbers rank him 29 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
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 — 73 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 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 21.2 mph
- 31st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.12 a game
- Distance
- 2.93 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 85.7 mph
- 26th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 88.9
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 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first
6
points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 5 assists, 17 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 1487 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
- DAL took 50.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.3% — 3.8 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,487 minutes at five-on-five — 96th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Miro Heiskanen | 54.7% | 53.3% | 52.5% |
| Wyatt Johnston | 55.9% | 53.3% | 47.9% |
| Jason Robertson | 56.6% | 52.9% | 54.8% |
54.7% together, 53.3% for him apart and 52.5% for Heiskanen 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
120 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 6 of them goals. His median goal came from 44 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 56% from beyond forty.