This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

William Eklund

41 assists at 22 on a club that scored 210 goals, and 45 per cent of his shot attempts from inside 20 feet.

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

2021-22	SJS	9	0	4	4	-3	2	0	0	0	8	0.0	14:20
2022-23	SJS	8	2	1	3	-5	6	0	0	0	18	11.1	19:50
2023-24	SJS	80	16	29	45	-45	30	8	0	5	128	12.5	18:40
2024-25	SJS	77	17	41	58	-7	29	6	1	2	151	11.3	19:33
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	174	35	75	110	-60	67	14	1	7	305	11.5	18:53

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

17 goals and 41 assists in 77 games — 58 points at 19:33 a night, with 6 power-play goals and a shorthanded goal on 151 shots. Minus-7, which on this club is remarkable.

50.0 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 47th percentile. His ice went 48-50 against an expectation of 42.52-42.60 — eleven goals of scoring missing and six extra conceded, on the club’s best line.

The Finesse Game

151 attempts at a median of 23 feet with 45 per cent from inside 20, converting at 11.3 per cent. He gets to the middle and he is not big enough for that to be comfortable.

41 assists on a club that scored 210 goals is the number to keep. He holds the puck on the half wall until a lane opens, he plays at a slower tempo than the men around him, and he is the best passer on the roster.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 185 and light. He does not win a puck against a defenceman on the wall and he does not forecheck with force.

29 penalty minutes in 77 games. He takes contact to make a play and does not answer it, and at this size on this roster that is the only choice available.

The Intangibles

Seventh overall in 2021 out of Djurgården, where he was playing men’s professional hockey at 17.

174 NHL games and 110 points. He is 22, and on a club whose two best forwards are 19 and 20, he is the one who has already had a season worth building on.

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.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
50.0% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 42.0% for his club in the minutes he sat: +8.0, 98th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“**41 assists on a club that scored 210 goals is the number to keep.**”
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“He gets to the middle and he is not big enough for that to be comfortable.”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“He does not win a puck against a defenceman on the wall and he does not forecheck with force.”
forechecks-aggressivelyhe lacks it· first man in, and on the puck
“He does not win a puck against a defenceman on the wall and he does not forecheck with force.”
retaliateshe lacks it· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty
“He takes contact to make a play and does not answer it, and at this size on this roster that is the only choice available.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,074 minutes

Expected goals: 50%; 53rd pct
Shot attempts: 50.4%; 57th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 48 for, 50 against. Expected: 42.5 and 42.6.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

80th

Numbers

53rd

The report ranks him 27 points above where the numbers do. 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 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 · 77 games

Top speed: 22.6 mph; 66th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.48 a game
Distance: 3.07 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.7 mph; 93rd 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.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1074 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: SJS took 44.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 50.0% — 5.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,074 minutes at five-on-five — 71st percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Macklin Celebrini	54.2%	46.6%	46.2%
Tyler Toffoli	55.1%	46.3%	43.6%
Mario Ferraro	49.7%	50.1%	45.3%

54.2% together, 46.6% for him apart and 46.2% for Celebrini apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

246 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 18 of them goals. His median goal came from 19 feet. 45% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 20% from beyond forty.