This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nathan Walker
St. Louis Blues Left Wing
The first Australian to play in the NHL, 63 penalty minutes at 5-9, and a twenty-eight goal finishing surplus on his ice.
| 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 | STL | 56 | 2 | 8 | 10 | +10 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 43 | 4.7 | 10:17 |
| 2023-24 | STL | 45 | 7 | 6 | 13 | -1 | 18 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 43 | 16.3 | 10:49 |
| 2024-25 | STL | 73 | 8 | 8 | 16 | -5 | 63 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 72 | 11.1 | 12:06 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 229 | 28 | 28 | 56 | 0 | 122 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 220 | 12.7 | 11:12 |
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
8 goals and 8 assists in 73 games — 16 points at 12:06 a night, minus-5, with 63 penalty minutes.
46.9 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 26th percentile, across 804 minutes. His ice went 22-22 against an expectation of 21.88-24.77 — a twenty-eight goal finishing surplus, the largest of any player in this edition, on a fourth line that was being outchanced.
The Finesse Game
72 attempts at a median of 31 feet with 30 per cent from inside 20 and 30 per cent from beyond 40, and 8 goals. There is not much here: 56 points in 229 NHL games.
8 assists in 73 games. He is a forechecker who puts the puck at the net and the offensive game has never developed beyond that.
The Physical Game
5-9 and 191 and he hits everybody. He forechecks first, he finishes checks on men fifty pounds heavier, and he is genuinely irritating to line up against.
63 penalty minutes in 73 games is a very high rate for a fourth-line winger at twelve minutes a night. He goes into the scrum, he draws the response, and a share of the total is the second penalty in a sequence he started.
The Intangibles
Born in Cardiff and raised in Sydney, the first Australian to be drafted into and to play in the NHL, and it took him until he was 23 to get there.
229 games across three organisations and eleven professional seasons, most of them in the American League. He is 31 and the story is better than the statistics.
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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
30.3% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 90th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
- hard-minutes· is started in his own end, against the other club's best
32% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 7th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
“He forechecks first, he finishes checks on men fifty pounds heavier, and he is genuinely irritating to line up against.”
“He forechecks first, he finishes checks on men fifty pounds heavier, and he is genuinely irritating to line up against.”
“He goes into the scrum, he draws the response, and a share of the total is the second penalty in a sequence he started.”
“He goes into the scrum, he draws the response, and a share of the total is the second penalty in a sequence he started.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 804 minutes
- Expected goals
- 46.9%
- 26th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.6%
- 22nd 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: 22 for, 22 against. Expected: 21.9 and 24.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 16 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 — 71 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 · 73 games
- Top speed
- 23.1 mph
- 89th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 1.00 a game
- Distance
- 1.90 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 81.9 mph
- 28th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 83.9
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.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 804 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
- STL took 51.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 46.9% — 4.2 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 804 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexey Toropchenko | 48.1% | 43.0% | 47.8% |
| Radek Faksa | 47.4% | 45.9% | 50.9% |
| Ryan Suter | 44.7% | 48.0% | 48.8% |
48.1% together, 43.0% for him apart and 47.8% for Toropchenko apart. He was worse away from Toropchenko, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Toropchenko did.
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
99 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 15 feet. 30% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 30% from beyond forty.