This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nathan Walker
St. Louis Blues Left Wing
Eight goals in thirty games at 11:33 a night, from Cardiff, in a fifth season and a fifty-fifth NHL game.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | WSH/EDM | 9 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 16.7 | 9:27 |
| 2018-19 | WSH | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | +1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 8:09 |
| 2019-20 | STL | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | -2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 16.7 | 11:08 |
| 2020-21 | STL | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | -4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 10.0 | 13:30 |
| 2021-22 | STL | 30 | 8 | 4 | 12 | +1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 38 | 21.1 | 11:33 |
| 2022-23 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 55 | 11 | 6 | 17 | -4 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 62 | 17.7 | 11:16 |
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
30 games, 8 goals and 4 assists at 11:33 a night, plus-1, two penalty minutes, 38 shots, two game-winners. Eighty-ninth overall in 2014 by Washington — the third round — five seasons, 55 games, 17 points.
Three hundred and forty minutes of five-on-five ice is well short of the five hundred this book requires before it will place a man in the league distribution, so what follows is described rather than ranked.
The Finesse Game
Eight goals from thirty-eight shots is 21.1 per cent, from a 24-foot median with a third of them from inside twenty feet.
56.1 per cent of the expected goals across 340 five-on-five minutes — the highest figure attached to any St Louis forward, and it comes off three hundred and forty minutes.
He started 46.2 per cent of his end-zone shifts in the attacking end — sixty-seven against seventy-eight — a chair a little on the hard side of even.
His ice went 14-14 against an expectation of 13.86-10.83, so the goals against ran three above the model on a sample of twenty-eight goals.
Beside Logan Brown the pair took 63.1 per cent of the expected goals across 217 attempts. Beside Colton Parayko, 61.0 across 155. Every one of the six pairs recorded for him is at or above fifty-three per cent, which on a club that finished 26th in attempt share is worth noting and is not worth much on this sample.
The Physical Game
5-9 and 191 pounds, and two penalty minutes in thirty games. Sixteen across a fifty-five-game career.
The Intangibles
22.0 mph top speed and 1.3 bursts a game, drawn from thirty games.
1.87 miles a game is the 8th percentile of the 568 skaters the tracking covers with forty games, which at 11:33 a night is the shift length.
His shot is 82.4 mph, the 4th percentile.
He is 28, born in Cardiff, and has fifty-five NHL games across five calendar years. Eight goals in thirty games and the best possession numbers on the roster are the case. Fifty-five NHL games across five seasons, a soft shot and a sample that would not settle a coin toss are why the case has never been made before, and this is the closest it has come.
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.
- drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
56.1% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 47.6% for his club in the minutes he sat: +8.5, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 340 minutes
- Expected goals
- 56.1%
- 90th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.9%
- 28th 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: 14 for, 14 against. Expected: 13.9 and 10.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 32 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 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 62 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 · 30 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 45th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.27 a game
- Distance
- 1.87 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 82.4 mph
- 28th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.0
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 84.1
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 · 340 minutes at five-on-five
- Logan Brown39%
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
- STL took 48.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.1% — 7.9 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- 340 minutes at five-on-five — 10th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logan Brown | 63.1% | 51.6% | 45.0% |
| Alexei Toropchenko | 55.5% | 56.5% | 42.1% |
| Justin Faulk | 53.0% | 57.8% | 49.3% |
63.1% together, 51.6% for him apart and 45.0% for Brown 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
54 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 33% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 11% from beyond forty.