This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Esa Lindell
Dallas Stars Defense
Twenty-two minutes a night on the penalty kill and 12 penalty minutes in 76 games — the 10th-fewest penalties per 60 of the 202 qualified defencemen.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 440 | 36 | 105 | 141 | +58 | 122 | 7 | 4 | 5 | 704 | 5.1 | 22:44 |
This Season So Far
The 2022-23 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
4 goals and 21 assists in 76 games at 22:03 a night, the 75th percentile among defencemen, with a plus-4 and 12 penalty minutes.
2:38 a night short-handed is the 86th percentile on a penalty kill that gave up 5.286 expected goals per 60, the third-best rate in the league.
49.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,376 minutes, the 47th percentile — but 45.9 per cent of the shot attempts, the 16th. The gap is the shape of his job: the puck is at the other end a great deal and the shots that come back are bad ones.
The Finesse Game
4.87 shots per 60 is the 58th percentile and four goals on 136 shots is 2.9 per cent, the 22nd. The median travels 49 feet and 11 per cent come from the slot. He shoots to be blocked or tipped, which is what a defenceman with no power-play time is for.
0:26 a night on the man advantage is the 52nd percentile and 12 per cent of his points came there. 0.79 even-strength points per 60 is the 31st percentile. There is not much offence and there is no pretence of it.
0.72 takeaways per 60 is the 33rd percentile and 1.97 giveaways is the 63rd. Neither number is doing anything interesting.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 217. 5.30 blocks per 60 is the 80th percentile among defencemen and 3.98 hits is the 50th.
0.215 penalties taken per 60 is the 10th-lowest of the 202 qualified defencemen — twelve minutes in seventy-six games, at twenty-two a night, most of it against the other team’s best. Drawn minus taken is plus-0.14, the 89th percentile. For a defensive defenceman who kills more penalties than almost anyone, that is the single most valuable thing on this page: he takes on the hardest assignment in the sport and does not hand the other side a power play for it.
22.3 mph is the 66th percentile and 7.93 miles per 60 is the 11th-lowest of 192 — he covers less ground than nearly every defenceman in the league, at ordinary speed, which is the reading of a man who stays between the puck and his own net and does not chase.
40.4 per cent of his even-strength time was spent in the attacking zone, the 13th percentile. The zone he lives in is not in doubt.
The Intangibles
Seventy-fourth overall in 2012, 440 NHL games, all of them for Dallas, and a career plus-58.
Seven seasons in one organisation at a rising workload, and the last four above 23 minutes. The chance share has never been good and the goals against have always been better than the chances. His ice went 50-53 last season against an expectation of 53.17-54.6.
Nothing here measures gap control or how he defends the rush, which is the whole of the argument for him, and the repo says so rather than guessing.
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
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
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.
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.16 penalty minutes a game over 76, 6th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
“he takes on the hardest assignment in the sport and does not hand the other side a power play for it”
“He shoots to be blocked or tipped, which is what a defenceman with no power-play time is for.”
“which is the reading of a man who stays between the puck and his own net and does not chase”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,376 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.3%
- 50th pct
- Shot attempts
- 45.9%
- 21st 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: 50 for, 53 against. Expected: 53.2 and 54.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 24 points above where the report does. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 55 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, 2021-22 · 76 games
- Top speed
- 22.3 mph
- 77th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.21 a game
- Distance
- 2.91 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 90.7 mph
- 40th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.4
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.
Usual linemates
2021-22 · 1376 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, 2021-22
- The club
- DAL took 51.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.3% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,376 minutes at five-on-five — 93rd percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Klingberg | 49.6% | 49.2% | 52.8% |
| Jamie Benn | 50.2% | 49.0% | 46.8% |
| Tyler Seguin | 43.9% | 51.6% | 48.0% |
49.6% together, 49.2% for him apart and 52.8% for Klingberg apart. Klingberg was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
150 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.