This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Sean Walker
Philadelphia Flyers Defense
Undrafted, the 72nd percentile of measured speed and the 15th of ground covered — one of the widest gaps in the league.
| 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 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 232 | 16 | 51 | 67 | -37 | 92 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 386 | 4.2 | 16:54 |
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
3 goals and 10 assists in 70 games — 13 points — for Los Angeles, at 14:50 a night. Minus-3, 94 shots at 3.2 per cent, 36 penalty minutes.
51.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 65th percentile, with his ice at 40-42 against an expectation of 40.86-38.06 across 933 minutes.
He started 53.6 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 67th percentile.
Five seasons, 232 games, 67 points, a career minus-37, and he was never drafted.
The Finesse Game
94 shots at a median of 47 feet, and three goals.
Beyond forty: 59 shots on goal and 2 goals, 3.39 per cent, at the positional rate. From twenty to forty: 26 shots and 1 goal. Inside twenty: six shots and none.
Three goals on ninety-one shots on goal is a 3.2 per cent rate and 16 goals in 232 career games says it is the norm.
85 wrist shots out of 128 tracked attempts and 14 slap — an 11 per cent share, low for a defenceman. 91.0 mph at the 50th percentile.
51 career assists against 16 goals. The pass out is short and safe and there is no walk from the line.
The Physical Game
5-11 and 191 pounds, with 36 penalty minutes.
Top speed 22.7 mph, the 72nd percentile — and 2.00 miles a game, the 15th. 0.7 bursts a game, the 37th.
That is one of the widest gaps in the league between how fast a man can go and how much ground he covers, and it is fifteen minutes a night in short shifts on a third pair.
He closes gaps with his feet, which at 191 pounds is the only defensive tool available to him. He does not play the body, does not clear the crease and cannot win a puck against a heavy forward.
What the record shows is a chance share above fifty in every full season he has played, on clubs of every quality, which for an undrafted third-pair defenceman is a genuinely good line.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, out of Bowling Green, and 232 NHL games across five seasons in Los Angeles.
Sixteen goals, 51 assists, and a season lost almost entirely in 2021-22 — six games.
He is twenty-eight. The file is a mobile right-shot third-pair defenceman who moves the puck adequately and cannot defend by force, which on a club with Ristolainen and Seeler already on it is a sensible thing to add.
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.
- 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.
“Undrafted, out of Bowling Green, and 232 NHL games across five seasons in Los Angeles.”
“He closes gaps with his feet, which at 191 pounds is the only defensive tool available to him.”
“He does not play the body, does not clear the crease and cannot win a puck against a heavy forward.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 933 minutes
- Expected goals
- 51.8%
- 65th pct
- Shot attempts
- 52.1%
- 72nd 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: 40 for, 42 against. Expected: 40.9 and 38.1.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe numbers rank him 48 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 — 58 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 · 70 games
- Top speed
- 22.7 mph
- 88th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.70 a game
- Distance
- 2.00 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 91.0 mph
- 45th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
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 with LAK · 933 minutes at five-on-five
- Alexander Edleroff the roster62%
- Tobias Bjornfot10%
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
- LAK took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 51.8% — 1.7 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third pair, 933 minutes at five-on-five — 51st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexander Edler | 50.5% | 54.0% | 51.3% |
| Blake Lizotte | 51.3% | 52.0% | 55.1% |
| Kevin Fiala | 57.0% | 50.0% | 53.3% |
50.5% together, 54.0% for him apart and 51.3% for Edler apart. He was better away from Edler, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Edler.
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
125 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 3 of them goals. His median goal came from 40 feet. 6% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 67% from beyond forty.