This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2024-25 report →
Oliver Wahlstrom
New York Islanders Right Wing
One hundred and fifty-five attacking-zone starts against thirty-six — the softest deployment in this book — and a chance share of forty-nine point eight.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | NYI | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 0.0 | 10:17 |
| 2020-21 | NYI | 44 | 12 | 9 | 21 | +2 | 21 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 94 | 12.8 | 12:23 |
| 2021-22 | NYI | 73 | 13 | 11 | 24 | -6 | 74 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 157 | 8.3 | 12:04 |
| 2022-23 | NYI | 35 | 7 | 9 | 16 | +5 | 32 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 70 | 10.0 | 12:10 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 161 | 32 | 29 | 61 | -1 | 131 | 10 | 0 | 4 | 330 | 9.7 | 12:05 |
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
7 goals and 9 assists in 35 games — 16 points — at 12:10 a night. Plus-5, 70 shots at 10.0 per cent, 32 penalty minutes.
And then the deployment, which is the most extreme in this book in the other direction from his team-mates’. He was on the ice for 155 five-on-five draws in the attacking zone and 36 in his own — 81.2 per cent. No skater in this book with three hundred five-on-five minutes was started further from his own goal.
What came back was 49.8 per cent of the expected goals, across 390 minutes. Half the chances, from four attacking draws for every one of the other kind.
His ice finished 20-8 against an expectation of 14.96-15.06, which on 390 minutes is a number to note and not to trust.
Four seasons, 161 games, 61 points.
The Finesse Game
70 shots at a median of 30 feet, and seven goals.
Inside twenty: 17 shots on goal and 3 goals. Twenty to forty: 33 and 3. Beyond forty: 18 and 1.
The shot is the reason he was drafted eleventh and it is still the best thing here: 59 wrist shots out of 97 tracked attempts, a measured 94.8 mph at the 77th percentile on eleven slap shots, and a release that gets away before a defenceman closes.
What is missing is everywhere else. Thirty-two goals in 161 games, nine assists in thirty-five, and half the shots taken from beyond the top of the circle by a man whose value is supposed to be in the slot.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 205, with 32 penalty minutes in thirty-five games.
Top speed 22.0 mph, the 36th percentile; 0.4 bursts a game, the 22nd; 1.95 miles a game, the 14th.
Bottom third of the league in all three, from a 6-2 winger of twenty-three. That is the number that explains the deployment: a club does not start a man in the attacking zone four times out of five because it wants to, and this one is not fast enough to be started anywhere else.
He will go to the net and take a cross-check, and the 32 penalty minutes say he answers back. Neither of those is the problem.
Thirty-five games is thirty-eight fewer than he played the year before.
The Intangibles
Eleventh overall in 2018, and 61 points in 161 games across four seasons.
The 12 goals in 44 games in 2020-21 is still the best rate he has posted.
He is twenty-three, which is young enough that none of this is settled, and the honest summary is stark: the club has given him the easiest zone starts in the league to find out what he is, and the answer that has come back is a dead-average chance share and seven goals in thirty-five games.
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.
- sheltered· is started in the attacking end
81% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 100th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
“He will go to the net and take a cross-check, and the 32 penalty minutes say he answers back.”
“Bottom third of the league in all three, from a 6-2 winger of twenty-three.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 390 minutes
- Expected goals
- 49.8%
- 50th pct
- Shot attempts
- 51.5%
- 66th 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: 20 for, 8 against. Expected: 15.0 and 15.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 30 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 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 59 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, 2022-23 · 35 games
- Top speed
- 22.0 mph
- 44th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.43 a game
- Distance
- 1.95 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 94.8 mph
- 91st 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 84.9
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
2022-23 · 390 minutes at five-on-five
- Josh Baileyoff the roster45%
- Anders Lee17%
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
- NYI took 49.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 49.8% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Fourth line, 390 minutes at five-on-five — 10th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathew Barzal | 50.1% | 49.2% | 54.3% |
| Josh Bailey | 45.5% | 53.8% | 45.6% |
| Noah Dobson | 40.0% | 55.2% | 51.2% |
50.1% together, 49.2% for him apart and 54.3% for Barzal apart. Barzal was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
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
95 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 30 feet. 28% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 24% from beyond forty.