This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Nils Lundkvist
Dallas Stars Defense
Two goals on seventy-three shots, 83 per cent of them from beyond forty feet, and a plus-13.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | NYR | 25 | 1 | 3 | 4 | +4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 3.1 | 13:56 |
| 2022-23 | DAL | 60 | 6 | 10 | 16 | -5 | 26 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 94 | 6.4 | 16:19 |
| 2023-24 | DAL | 59 | 2 | 17 | 19 | +13 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 2.7 | 14:06 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 144 | 9 | 30 | 39 | +12 | 42 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 199 | 4.5 | 14:60 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 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
Fifty-nine games, 2 goals and 17 assists, 14:06 a night and plus-13. He took 53.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 775 minutes, the 81st percentile, and his ice went 39-25 against an expectation of 34.78-29.83.
Nineteen points from a third-pair defenceman at fourteen minutes a night is good value, and a plus-13 behind a club with this structure is what a third pair should look like.
The Finesse Game
Seventy-three shots at a median of 57 feet with 83 per cent from beyond 40 and 2 per cent from inside 20 — the most perimeter shot profile on the roster by a distance. Two went in.
Seventeen assists in 59 games and 30 in 144 career games. The first pass is quick and the puck moves north, and it is why a first-round pick who could not hold a job in New York has one here.
The Physical Game
He is 6-1 and 194 and defends with position rather than contact. Sixteen penalty minutes in 59 games is a low rate.
He does not win the wall against heavy wingers and he does not clear a crease. On the third pair behind Heiskanen, Harley and Lindell it is not asked of him.
The Intangibles
The 28th pick in 2018 out of Pitea, who asked to be traded out of New York at 21 and has played 144 games at 24. He is plus-12 across all of them.
Dallas has added Dumba, Lyubushkin and Smith to a blue line where he was the sixth defenceman. The chance share says he should keep the job and the roster says he probably will not.
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
- 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.
- perimeter· shoots from the outside, by choice or because he cannot get in
83.5% of his attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 50% keep it
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
60% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 93rd percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“The first pass is quick and the puck moves north, and it is why a first-round pick who could not hold a job in New York has one here.”
“He does not win the wall against heavy wingers and he does not clear a crease.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 775 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.8%
- 81st pct
- Shot attempts
- 53.5%
- 82nd 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: 39 for, 25 against. Expected: 34.8 and 29.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 77 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 652 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 54 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, 2023-24 · 59 games
- Top speed
- 22.2 mph
- 71st pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.95 a game
- Distance
- 2.23 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 100.4 mph
- 93rd pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.7
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.2
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
2023-24 · 775 minutes at five-on-five
- Esa Lindell24%
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, 2023-24
- The club
- DAL took 54.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.8% — 0.8 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 775 minutes at five-on-five — 37th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan Suter | 56.9% | 51.7% | 52.4% |
| Wyatt Johnston | 58.3% | 52.0% | 57.2% |
| Matt Duchene | 51.2% | 55.0% | 52.4% |
56.9% together, 51.7% for him apart and 52.4% for Suter 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
103 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 2 of them goals. His median goal came from 58 feet. 2% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 83% from beyond forty.