This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2025-26 report →

Jordan Oesterle

Undrafted, 349 games, and the second percentile in top speed.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2014-15	EDM	6	0	1	1	-4	0	0	0	0	7	0.0	14:42
2015-16	EDM	17	0	5	5	+1	0	0	0	0	24	0.0	21:41
2016-17	EDM	2	0	0	0	-1	0	0	0	0	2	0.0	17:17
2017-18	CHI	55	5	10	15	-11	8	1	0	0	99	5.1	20:31
2018-19	ARI	71	6	14	20	-3	12	3	0	0	77	7.8	18:54
2019-20	ARI	58	3	10	13	-9	14	0	0	0	69	4.3	17:01
2020-21	ARI	43	1	10	11	-10	10	1	0	0	38	2.6	17:54
2021-22	DET	45	2	6	8	-7	4	0	0	1	63	3.2	18:17
2022-23	DET	52	2	9	11	-9	19	0	0	0	54	3.7	15:39
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	349	19	65	84	-53	67	5	0	1	433	4.4	18:13

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

2 goals and 9 assists in 52 games for Detroit — 11 points at 15:39 a night, minus-9, on 54 shots and 19 penalty minutes.

45.4 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 792 minutes, the 23rd percentile. His ice went 25-34 against an expectation of 27.76-33.36, which is close to the chances at both ends.

The Finesse Game

54 attempts at a median of 48 feet, 65 per cent from beyond 40 and 4 per cent from inside 20, converting at 3.7 per cent. 84 points in 349 career games, 65 of them assists.

The first pass is competent and quick. There is nothing else — no shot worth respecting and no ability to carry the puck through pressure.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 181 and there is no physical game — 67 penalty minutes in 349 games, and he cannot defend the front of a net.

The skating measurement is severe: 20.8 mph is the 2nd percentile in the league and 0.1 bursts over twenty miles an hour a game is the 3rd. He is among the two or three slowest defencemen with an NHL job. For a man of ordinary size with no physical game, that leaves nothing to defend with except position, and a seventh defenceman is the correct role.

The Intangibles

Undrafted, out of Western Michigan, and 349 NHL games across nine seasons on five clubs — a genuinely good career from nowhere.

He is 31, signed to a one-year deal as depth. Calgary has four top-four defencemen and needed a seventh; this is that signing, and the only way he plays regularly is if the injuries arrive.

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.

undrafteda strength· arrived without a pick attached
“Undrafted, out of Western Michigan, and 349 NHL games across nine seasons on five clubs”
clears-the-creasehe lacks it· moves grown men off the front of his net
“there is no physical game — 67 penalty minutes in 349 games, and he cannot defend the front of a net”
transitionpresent and ordinary· carries it out; gains the line under control
“The first pass is competent and quick.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 792 minutes

Expected goals: 45.4%; 23rd pct
Shot attempts: 45.3%; 19th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 25 for, 34 against. Expected: 27.8 and 33.4.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

3rd

Numbers

23rd

The numbers rank him 20 points above where the report does. 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. 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 120 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 50 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 with DET · 792 minutes at five-on-five

Olli Maatta41%
Jake Walman20%
Gustav Lindströmnow MTL15%

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: DET took 46.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.4% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
The role: 792 minutes at five-on-five — 39th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Olli Määttä	46.1%	44.9%	45.1%
Joe Veleno	41.2%	46.9%	46.8%
Dominik Kubalik	47.0%	44.9%	45.6%

46.1% together, 44.9% for him apart and 45.1% for Määttä 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

74 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 36 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 65% from beyond forty.