This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jake Walman
Detroit Red Wings Defense
The 5th-hardest shot, 6th-most ground covered and 7th-most shots per 60 of the 202 qualified defencemen — at fourteen minutes a night.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 76 | 4 | 8 | 12 | -9 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 135 | 3.0 | 14:08 |
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
3 goals and 7 assists in 51 games for St Louis and Detroit — 10 points, a minus-3 and 10 penalty minutes at 14:01 a night, the 5th percentile among defencemen.
49.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 665 minutes, the 44th percentile — the best share of any Detroit defenceman who played forty games, in the least ice time of any of them.
His ice went 16-24 against an expectation of 27.06-28.18 — eleven fewer goals for than the chances promised, which on 665 minutes is a goaltender’s problem and not his.
The Finesse Game
7.30 shots per 60 is the 7th-most of the 202 qualified defencemen. At fourteen minutes a night — the fifth-lowest ice time of any qualified defenceman in the league.
17 per cent of them came from the slot, the 86th percentile, at a median of 46 feet, the 11th — he shoots often, and closer than a point man does.
101.5 mph is the 5th-hardest recorded shot of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers, behind Colton Parayko, Radko Gudas, Ryan Pulock and Dmitry Orlov.
Three goals on 87 shots is 3.4 per cent, the 29th percentile. The volume and the speed are there and the results are not, and 51 games is not enough to say which of those is the truth.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 218.
4.5 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 6th-most of the 192 defencemen the tracking covers, and 9.07 miles per 60 is the 6th-most. 22.5 mph is the 81st percentile. He covers more ground, faster and more often, than almost every defenceman in the league — at the fifth-lowest ice time of any of them.
That is the most unusual file on this roster. A fourteen-minute defenceman does not usually skate like a thirty-minute one, and the reason is that nobody skating like that stays at fourteen minutes for long.
3.94 hits per 60 is the 49th percentile and 4.87 blocks is the 71st. 0.42 penalties taken per 60 is the 24th percentile — ten minutes in fifty-one games.
The Intangibles
Eighty-second overall in 2014, the third round, and 76 NHL games at 26 across three seasons.
With Robert Bortuzzo in St Louis he took 60.1 per cent of the chances over 319 attempts and 45.1 without him — a fragment, and the best number on the page. With Gustav Lindström in Detroit he took 42.5 per cent over 376 and 52.0 without. Two partners, two hundred-odd minutes each, and opposite answers. Neither is a finding.
The shot, the ground covered and the sprint count are all in the top ten of the position. The ice time is in the bottom five. One of those two facts is going to change, and this is the most interesting bet on the Detroit blue line.
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
0.20 penalty minutes a game over 51, 9th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
49.0% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 44.8% for his club in the minutes he sat: +4.2, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
“He covers more ground, faster and more often, than almost every defenceman in the league”
“he shoots often, and closer than a point man does”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 665 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49%
- 48th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.3%
- 58th 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: 16 for, 24 against. Expected: 27.1 and 28.2.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 15 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 649 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, 2021-22 · 51 games
- Top speed
- 22.5 mph
- 87th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.06 a game
- Distance
- 2.12 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 101.5 mph
- 99th 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 with STL · 370 minutes at five-on-five
- Justin Faulk20%
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
- DET took 45.4% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.0% — 3.6 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 665 minutes at five-on-five — 29th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gustav Lindström | 42.5% | 52.0% | 47.4% |
| Robert Bortuzzo | 60.1% | 45.1% | 47.8% |
| Pius Suter | 49.4% | 48.9% | 47.1% |
42.5% together, 52.0% for him apart and 47.4% for Lindström apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
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
117 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 12% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 68% from beyond forty.