This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Jake Walman
Edmonton Oilers Defense
40 points and a 47.8 per cent chance share, and the most expensive deadline defenceman of the year.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 267 | 32 | 59 | 91 | +3 | 149 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 547 | 5.9 | 18:53 |
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
7 goals and 33 assists in 65 games for 40 points, plus-4, on 22:47 a night between San Jose and Edmonton.
49.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 47th percentile — the worst share of any Edmonton defenceman by six points — over 1,122 minutes, with on-ice goals of 57-52 against an expected 48-49. Most of that came on a very bad San Jose club and it is still the number to hold onto.
The Finesse Game
The skating and the puck-carrying are genuinely good. He leaves his own zone under control, joins a rush as a fourth attacker, and 33 assists is a real total for a defenceman on the clubs he played for.
164 shots and 7 goals; the release is decent without being a weapon. The decision-making is the weak half — he attempts the difficult play and the errors happen in dangerous places, which is how a defenceman with these tools posts a 30th-percentile share.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 218, and he is willing without being a shutdown presence. He takes contact, finishes some checks, and does not clear a crease reliably.
42 penalty minutes over 65 games is a moderate rate. The durability has been reasonable.
The Intangibles
A third-round pick, four organisations, a breakout at 28 on a last-place club, and a deadline trade that cost a first-round pick.
Edmonton needed a left-shot defenceman who could move a puck and paid a contender’s price for one. The 30th-percentile share is the thing to watch: on a club where every other defenceman is above the 80th, being at the 30th is not a context problem.
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.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
- 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.
“He leaves his own zone under control, joins a rush as a fourth attacker”
“33 assists is a real total for a defenceman on the clubs he played for.”
“He takes contact, finishes some checks”
“does not clear a crease reliably”
“The decision-making is the weak half — he attempts the difficult play and the errors happen in dangerous places”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,122 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.4%
- 48th pct
- Shot attempts
- 50.3%
- 56th 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: 57 for, 52 against. Expected: 47.8 and 48.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 12 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 · 65 games
- Top speed
- 22.1 mph
- 64th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.74 a game
- Distance
- 3.14 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 98.9 mph
- 95th 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 with SJS · 862 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
- EDM took 54.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.4% — 4.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- 1,122 minutes at five-on-five — 78th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cody Ceci | 44.2% | 54.5% | 39.0% |
| Fabian Zetterlund | 41.5% | 52.2% | 46.1% |
| William Eklund | 54.9% | 47.8% | 48.2% |
44.2% together, 54.5% for him apart and 39.0% for Ceci apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Ceci behind.
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
236 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 29 feet. 8% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 74% from beyond forty.