Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

21

Isac Lundeström

Anaheim Ducks Center

Two penalty minutes in sixty-one games, the softest shot measured in the league, and the hardest starts on the club.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2018-19ANA15022-12000130.013:02
2019-20ANA15044-20000100.013:55
2020-21ANA41639-9140005211.515:15
2021-22ANA80161329-380438319.315:29
2022-23ANA6141014-132010606.714:20
2023-24 so far
Career212263258-282605321811.914:49

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

4 goals and 10 assists in 61 games — 14 points at 14:20 a night, minus-13, with a shorthanded goal on 60 shots and 2 penalty minutes.

37 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 722 minutes, the 1st percentile, starting 35.3 per cent of his shifts in the attacking end — the 0th percentile in the league. He and Silfverberg were handed the worst starting positions in hockey and the results say so.

His ice went 20-34 against an expectation of 20.89-35.54, which is almost exactly what the chances predicted. There is nothing here to blame on luck.

The Finesse Game

60 attempts at a median of 19 feet, 51 per cent of them from inside 20, converting at 6.67 per cent.

The shot is measured at 76.1 mph — the 0th percentile, the softest of any regular skater in the league. That is not a stylistic note, it is a ceiling: a fourth-line centre who cannot beat an NHL goaltender from the slot scores four goals, which is what happened. 26 goals in 212 career games.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 192 and he does the defensive job without the body — 2 penalty minutes in 61 games and 26 in 212 for his career is remarkable discipline for a man taking defensive-zone draws every night.

The skating is genuine: 22.4 mph at the 56th percentile with 1.7 bursts a game at the 79th. He can close on a puck carrier and he can kill a penalty, and five career shorthanded goals says the anticipation is there.

The Intangibles

Twenty-third overall in 2018, and five years on the shape of the career is clear: a defensively responsible, disciplined, low-event fourth-line centre.

He is 23, which is young enough that the offence could still arrive, and the measured shot argues it will not. A club with a genuine top six can afford this player; a club that starts him in his own end because there is nobody else is asking him to be something the numbers say he is not.

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

    0.03 penalty minutes a game over 61, 4th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it

  • hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best

    32% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 9th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it

  • penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short

    “He can close on a puck carrier and he can kill a penalty, and five career shorthanded goals says the anticipation is there.”

  • defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead

    “a defensively responsible, disciplined, low-event fourth-line centre”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 722 minutes

Expected goals
37%
1st pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
39.8%
2nd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 20 for, 34 against. Expected: 20.9 and 35.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
17th
Numbers
1st

The 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 58 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.

Usual linemates

2022-23 · 722 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
ANA took 39.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 37.0% — 2.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
Third line, 722 minutes at five-on-five — 32nd percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Jakob Silfverberg41.8%33.1%33.4%
Cam Fowler33.8%39.4%43.8%
Frank Vatrano32.9%38.7%37.1%

41.8% together, 33.1% for him apart and 33.4% for Silfverberg apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

78 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 4 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 51% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.