Sean Walker

Undrafted, 22 minutes a night, and the 99th percentile in shot attempts.

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

2018-19	LAK	39	3	7	10	-8	8	1	0	0	55	5.5	15:26
2019-20	LAK	70	5	19	24	-12	26	0	0	0	127	3.9	18:50
2020-21	LAK	47	5	13	18	-13	18	0	0	0	92	5.4	18:10
2021-22	LAK	6	0	2	2	-1	4	0	0	0	18	0.0	18:22
2022-23	LAK	70	3	10	13	-3	36	0	0	1	94	3.2	14:50
2023-24	PHI/COL	81	10	19	29	+11	50	0	2	1	150	6.7	19:14
2024-25	CAR	82	5	11	16	-7	46	0	0	0	144	3.5	16:50
2025-26	CAR	81	9	22	31	+6	59	0	0	1	179	5.0	21:49
2026-27 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	476	40	103	143	-27	247	1	2	3	859	4.7	18:08

This Season So Far

The 2026-27 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

9 goals and 22 assists in 81 games — 31 points, plus-6, at 21:49 a night with 1,489 5-on-5 minutes, the most on the club.

The Finesse Game

Modest and useful. 253 unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet with 4 per cent inside 20, and 9 goals — the shot is a means of generating rebounds and he is good at getting it through.

22 assists from a defensive defenceman playing top-pair minutes is a fair return.

The Physical Game

5-11 and 191, which is small for the minutes he plays, and he compensates with positioning and a willingness to take the puck out of dangerous ice rather than fight for it. 59 penalty minutes.

The Intangibles

He was on for 61.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 99th percentile, and 56.7 per cent of the expected goals, 92nd, across more minutes than anyone else here.

And a number that shows how badly this club was let down: while he was on the ice the expected goals went 75.7 to 57.9 in his favour, and the actual goals went 64-65 against. That is a swing of 24 goals in the wrong direction, in 1 season, for 1 player. Nothing about it is his doing.

He is 31, undrafted, 476 games in. On any other roster this season reads as a career year. Here it reads as somebody who deserved considerably better from the man behind him.

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.

durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1,489 minutes

Expected goals: 56.7%; 95th pct
Shot attempts: 61.3%; 100th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 64 for, 65 against. Expected: 75.7 and 57.9.

The eye and the numbers

Sighted

Report

38th

Numbers

95th

The numbers rank him 57 points above where the report does. It was written with these numbers on screen and departs from them anyway, which makes the gap a judgment rather than an oversight. 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 656 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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, 2025-26 · 81 games

Top speed: 22.1 mph; 66th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.31 a game
Distance: 3.09 miles a game
Hardest shot: 95.4 mph; 81st pct

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.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

points in his last 10 games — 2 goals, 6 assists, 24 shots

Each bar is one game by points. Filled bars are games he scored in.

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1489 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, 2025-26

The club: CAR took 55.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.7% — 1.0 above the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,489 minutes at five-on-five — 97th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
K'Andre Miller	57.2%	55.9%	56.9%
Sebastian Aho	56.8%	56.6%	55.7%
Andrei Svechnikov	58.3%	56.0%	53.5%

57.2% together, 55.9% for him apart and 56.9% for Miller 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

253 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 35 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 72% from beyond forty.