Photo by Jenn G, CC BY-SA 2.0
Jake Walman
Edmonton Oilers Defense #96
A skating, shooting, slightly reckless defenseman who was a spare part on 3 teams before anyone noticed how good he had gotten.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | STL | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 11:04 |
| 2020-21 | STL | 24 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -7 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 47 | 2.1 | 14:28 |
| 2021-22 | STL/DET | 51 | 3 | 7 | 10 | -3 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 87 | 3.5 | 14:02 |
| 2022-23 | DET | 63 | 9 | 9 | 18 | +10 | 45 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 140 | 6.4 | 19:43 |
| 2023-24 | DET | 63 | 12 | 9 | 21 | -2 | 44 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 108 | 11.1 | 19:46 |
| 2024-25 | SJS/EDM | 65 | 7 | 33 | 40 | +4 | 42 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 164 | 4.3 | 22:47 |
| 2025-26 | EDM | 53 | 8 | 12 | 20 | -17 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 96 | 8.3 | 18:45 |
| 2026-27 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 320 | 40 | 71 | 111 | -14 | 159 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 643 | 6.2 | 18:52 |
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
8 goals and 20 points in 53 games, on just under 19 minutes a night. The minus-17 is ugly and is partly inherited: he has spent most of his career on teams that were outshot every night.
The Finesse Game
He skates beautifully. Long, easy strides, real top speed for a defenseman, and the ability to carry the puck out of trouble rather than pass out of it — he will take the puck end to end two or three times a game and it does not look forced when he does.
The shot is heavy and he gets it through. 8 goals from the back end in 53 games is a genuine rate, and it comes from a willingness to walk the line and find a lane rather than firing blindly into shin pads.
The reads are good rather than perfect. He joins the rush aggressively, and the judgment about when to go has improved a great deal over the last 3 seasons without becoming conservative.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 218, and he is stronger than he looks. He defends the rush with his feet, closes gaps well, and is willing to finish a check, though nobody would call him punishing. He has an edge to him that occasionally spills over into the sort of penalty that makes a bench sigh.
The Intangibles
He was a third-round pick who took the long route — St. Louis, Detroit, San Jose — and arrived here as a legitimate top-4 defenseman at an age when most players have stopped improving. That is unusual and speaks well of him.
The reservation is defensive consistency. He will lose a coverage in his own end, and the same aggression that produces his offense is what produces the goal against. On this roster that is a trade the club is happy to make.
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
5 of 92 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 5.4%, 97th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
- disciplined· stays out of the box
0.19 penalty minutes a game over 53, 5th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 892 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.4%
- 18th pct
- Shot attempts
- 48.1%
- 37th 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: 36 for, 52 against. Expected: 35.8 and 43.1.
The eye and the numbers
SightedThe report ranks him 64 points above where the numbers do. 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 — 78 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 · 53 games
- Top speed
- 23.5 mph
- 98th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.53 a game
- Distance
- 2.67 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 102.0 mph
- 99th 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
2
points in his last 10 games — 0 goals, 2 assists, 22 shots
Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.
Usual linemates
2025-26 · 892 minutes at five-on-five
- Ty Emberson18%
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
- EDM took 51.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.4% — 6.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 892 minutes at five-on-five — 47th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Darnell Nurse | 46.4% | 44.5% | 50.3% |
| Jack Roslovic | 45.4% | 45.4% | 53.7% |
| Vasily Podkolzin | 45.4% | 45.4% | 54.2% |
46.4% together, 44.5% for him apart and 50.3% for Nurse apart. Nurse 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
130 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 40 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 71% from beyond forty.