Armchair Scout
5

Tom Willander

Vancouver Canucks Defense

Twenty-one years old, seventy games, and the third percentile.

SeasonGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2025-267051621-2328000598.516:59
Career7051621-2328000598.516:59

Last Season

Five goals and 16 assists in 70 games — 21 points, minus-23, at 16:59 a night with 28 penalty minutes. His first professional season.

He turned 21 in February.

The Finesse Game

A hundred unblocked attempts from a median of 55 feet, 74 per cent from beyond forty, five goals.

Sixteen assists in 70 games is a fair rookie return and most of it is the first pass rather than anything created.

The skating is the tool — a long, easy stride that defends the rush well — and it is the reason he was taken eleventh overall.

The Physical Game

Six foot one and 180 pounds, and thin. Twenty-eight penalty minutes.

He is moved off the front of his own net and does not win board battles against men. There is a great deal of room on the frame.

The Intangibles

Forty-one point two per cent of the expected goals, third percentile, and 43 per cent of the shot attempts, fourth, across 1,048 minutes, with the chances 34.6 for and 49.5 against.

That is a fifteen-goal deficit in expected goals, and it is among the worst figures any defenceman posted last season.

Three points in his last ten. He is 21, and this club gave two defencemen aged nineteen and twenty a combined 2,311 minutes while conceding more goals than anybody. Whatever those numbers mean, they do not mean these two are bad players.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2025-26 · 1048 minutes

Expected goals
41.2%
3rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
43%
4th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 44 for, 56 against. Expected: 34.6 and 49.5.

The eye and the numbers

Report
69
Numbers
3

The numbers are colder on him than this report is — worth asking who he played with, and against whom.

Recent form

Last 20 appearances, 2025-26, oldest first

3

points in his last 10 games — 1 goals, 2 assists, 13 shots

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

Usual linemates

2025-26 · 1048 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.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

100 unblocked shots in 2025-26, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 28 feet. 7% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 73% from beyond forty.