This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Esa Lindell
Dallas Stars Defense
Plus-29 and ten penalty minutes in 82 games, off a 97.7 mph shot that produced eight goals.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 522 | 44 | 121 | 165 | +87 | 132 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 820 | 5.4 | 22:18 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 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
8 goals and 16 assists in all 82 games, plus-29, and 10 penalty minutes at 19:55 a night.
Ten penalty minutes across a full season at nearly twenty minutes a game is one of the lowest rates in the edition for a defenceman in that role. It is five minors in 82 games.
50.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,304 minutes, the 53rd percentile — dead average — with his ice at 54-45 against an expectation of 52.73-52.54. Eight goals better than the chances at the defensive end, which is Dallas’s goaltending arriving in his record.
Eight seasons, 522 games, all in Dallas.
The Finesse Game
116 shots at a median of 46 feet, 59 per cent from beyond forty, 12 per cent from inside twenty.
Beyond forty: 65 shots, two goals, 3.08 per cent. Inside forty: 43 shots, six goals, 13.95 per cent.
Six of his eight goals came from inside forty feet on a third of his volume — the split this book keeps finding, and one of the cleanest examples of it in five clubs.
97.7 mph at the 90th percentile is a genuinely hard shot, with eleven slap shots behind the measurement. It produced two goals from the point in 82 games, which is what a hard point shot produces.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 217. 22.4 mph at the 58th percentile, 0.3 bursts over twenty a game at the 8th, 2.69 miles a game at the 61st.
He almost never gets to top speed and does not need to: he plays a positional, containing game against other clubs’ best lines, and the plus-29 and the average possession share together say it works.
Ten penalty minutes is the physical section of this report. He does not hit, does not hook and does not get beaten badly enough to have to.
The Intangibles
74th overall in 2012 out of Vantaa, eight seasons in one organisation, and a shutdown role on a Conference Final club.
He is 29 and has played 76 or more games in four of his eight years. Nothing about the game is spectacular and every part of it has been reliable for most of a decade, which is the least fashionable and most valuable thing a defenceman can be.
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
0.12 penalty minutes a game over 82, 2nd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
34% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 3rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“he plays a positional, containing game against other clubs' best lines, and the plus-29 and the average possession share together say it works”
“eight seasons in one organisation, and a shutdown role on a Conference Final club”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,304 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.1%
- 54th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.3%
- 40th 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: 54 for, 45 against. Expected: 52.7 and 52.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 16 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2022-23 · 82 games
- Top speed
- 22.4 mph
- 83rd pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.26 a game
- Distance
- 2.69 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 97.7 mph
- 87th 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 90.0
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
2022-23 · 1304 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, 2022-23
- The club
- DAL took 52.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.1% — 1.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,304 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jani Hakanpää | 48.3% | 55.8% | 51.0% |
| Wyatt Johnston | 50.7% | 49.8% | 49.4% |
| Ty Dellandrea | 51.0% | 49.8% | 47.5% |
48.3% together, 55.8% for him apart and 51.0% for Hakanpää apart. He was better away from Hakanpää, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Hakanpää.
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
139 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 32 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 59% from beyond forty.