This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Will Borgen
New York Rangers Defense
84 games across two clubs, 81 per cent of his shots from beyond 40 feet, and an on-ice record twenty goals better than the chances.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-19 | BUF | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 | 16:33 |
| 2020-21 | BUF | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0.0 | 16:16 |
| 2021-22 | SEA | 36 | 2 | 6 | 8 | +1 | 28 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 49 | 4.1 | 15:17 |
| 2022-23 | SEA | 82 | 3 | 17 | 20 | +11 | 47 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 76 | 4.0 | 16:22 |
| 2023-24 | SEA | 82 | 3 | 22 | 25 | -5 | 65 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 97 | 3.1 | 17:35 |
| 2024-25 | SEA/NYR | 84 | 5 | 10 | 15 | -4 | 42 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 81 | 6.2 | 17:05 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 298 | 13 | 55 | 68 | -6 | 186 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 312 | 4.2 | 16:46 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 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
5 goals and 10 assists in 84 games between Seattle and New York — 15 points, minus-4, at 17:05 a night with 42 penalty minutes.
43.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 16th percentile, across 1,245 minutes. The results were far better than that: 46-60 on the ice against an expectation of 41.74-53.46. Twenty goals of surplus at one end over a single season is not a thing a defenceman does on purpose.
The Finesse Game
There is very little of it and the shot chart says so plainly: 81 per cent of his attempts came from beyond 40 feet at a median of 56, and 5 per cent from inside 20. This is a man at the blue line getting the puck toward the net and going no further.
68 points in 298 career games is the rate, and it has not moved in six seasons. The breakout pass is functional under light pressure and hurried under real pressure, which is where the chance share comes from.
The Physical Game
6-3 and 199, and the game is contact. He finishes checks, he defends the paint willingly, and he blocks shots in volume — 42 penalty minutes says the edge is real rather than advertised.
What he cannot do is skate away from a mistake. Against a line that moves the puck quickly he is beaten to the outside and has to defend from behind, and a 16th-percentile chance share over 1,245 minutes is not an accident of deployment.
The Intangibles
A fourth-round pick out of Minnesota who spent six seasons in Buffalo and Seattle being the third pair, arrived in December, and was signed here through his early thirties.
He is a fifth defenceman being paid and played as a fourth, which was defensible when this blue line had nothing else and is the sort of thing that gets exposed by a seven-game series.
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.
- durable· was available
84 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He finishes checks, he defends the paint willingly, and he blocks shots in volume — 42 penalty minutes says the edge is real rather than advertised.”
“He finishes checks, he defends the paint willingly, and he blocks shots in volume — 42 penalty minutes says the edge is real rather than advertised.”
“The breakout pass is functional under light pressure and hurried under real pressure, which is where the chance share comes from.”
“Against a line that moves the puck quickly he is beaten to the outside and has to defend from behind, and a 16th-percentile chance share over 1,245 minutes is not an accident of deployment.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,245 minutes
- Expected goals
- 43.8%
- 11th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.3%
- 20th 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: 46 for, 60 against. Expected: 41.7 and 53.5.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 points of one another. 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.
Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 63 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, 2024-25 · 84 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 85th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.64 a game
- Distance
- 2.47 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 86.8 mph
- 27th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.6
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 89.7
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
2024-25 · 794 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, 2024-25
- The club
- NYR took 47.7% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 43.8% — 3.9 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,245 minutes at five-on-five — 88th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| K'Andre Miller | 46.3% | 41.1% | 50.5% |
| Mika Zibanejad | 49.4% | 42.3% | 48.3% |
| Will Cuylle | 41.3% | 44.5% | 49.8% |
46.3% together, 41.1% for him apart and 50.5% for Miller apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Miller and did not follow 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
124 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 38 feet. 5% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 81% from beyond forty.