This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Esa Lindell
Dallas Stars Defense
Plus-34 on a pairing that took the hardest minutes, and a 49.5 per cent chance share that says how hard they were.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 684 | 54 | 163 | 217 | +138 | 158 | 8 | 4 | 7 | 1033 | 5.2 | 22:04 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
5 goals and 21 assists in 80 games for 26 points, plus-34 — the highest figure on the club — on 22:11 a night.
50.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 58th percentile, over 1,395 minutes, which is the honest reading of his job: he takes the defensive-zone starts and the other club’s best line, and he comes out of it roughly even. His on-ice goals were 65-44 against an expected 59-58.
The Finesse Game
There is very little and there is not meant to be. 99 shots from a median of 51 feet and 5 goals; the first pass is safe rather than quick, and he will eat a puck against the boards rather than force a play up the middle.
What he does have is a genuinely good read on when a rush is about to happen. He kills plays before they start more often than he defends them after, which is the reason a defenceman with these offensive numbers has held a top-pair job for eight years.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 217, and he defends the front of his net properly — boxing out, tying up sticks, and clearing men when he has to. He is not a big hitter and does not chase contact.
14 penalty minutes across 80 games is remarkable for a defenceman who plays this many defensive-zone minutes. He is almost never beaten badly enough to need his stick.
The Intangibles
Ten seasons, one organisation, and the most thankless job on the roster. He is the reason Heiskanen and Harley get to play the way they do.
At 31 the skating is the thing to watch. He was never fast, and a defenceman whose value is arriving on time has a short runway once that goes. The contract runs into his mid-thirties.
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
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
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
0.17 penalty minutes a game over 80, 6th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- durable· was available
80 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
36% 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
“the first pass is safe rather than quick, and he will eat a puck against the boards rather than force a play up the middle”
“he takes the defensive-zone starts and the other club's best line, and he comes out of it roughly even”
“he defends the front of his net properly — boxing out, tying up sticks, and clearing men when he has to”
“He is not a big hitter and does not chase contact.”
“He is almost never beaten badly enough to need his stick.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,395 minutes
- Expected goals
- 50.6%
- 59th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.2%
- 20th 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: 65 for, 44 against. Expected: 59.0 and 57.6.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 1 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 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, 2024-25 · 80 games
- Top speed
- 21.8 mph
- 55th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.23 a game
- Distance
- 2.88 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.2 mph
- 22nd 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 89.7
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
2024-25 · 1395 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, 2024-25
- The club
- DAL took 50.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.6% — 0.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,395 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jason Robertson | 52.0% | 49.9% | 54.8% |
| Wyatt Johnston | 49.4% | 51.1% | 50.5% |
| Matt Duchene | 51.5% | 50.2% | 50.9% |
52.0% together, 49.9% for him apart and 54.8% for Robertson 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
145 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.