William Karlsson

The 95th percentile of chances from a defensive centre, and 4 penalty minutes in 53 games.

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

2014-15	ANA/CBJ	21	3	2	5	+3	2	0	0	1	29	10.3	12:14
2015-16	CBJ	81	9	11	20	-9	6	0	0	1	108	8.3	14:28
2016-17	CBJ	81	6	19	25	+10	10	1	0	3	96	6.3	13:23
2017-18	VGK	82	43	35	78	+49	12	8	4	6	184	23.4	18:43
2018-19	VGK	82	24	32	56	+1	16	7	1	5	169	14.2	18:51
2019-20	VGK	63	15	31	46	+11	16	2	2	1	138	10.9	18:52
2020-21	VGK	56	14	25	39	+19	4	1	0	4	111	12.6	18:40
2021-22	VGK	67	12	23	35	+3	10	1	2	0	135	8.9	18:17
2022-23	VGK	82	14	39	53	+14	10	2	2	2	161	8.7	17:28
2023-24	VGK	70	30	30	60	+15	22	7	1	2	175	17.1	17:36
2024-25	VGK	53	9	20	29	+17	4	0	2	4	119	7.6	17:01
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	738	179	267	446	+133	112	29	14	29	1425	12.6	17:06

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

9 goals and 20 assists in 53 games — 29 points at 17:01 a night, plus-17, with 2 shorthanded goals, 4 game-winners and 4 penalty minutes. He missed a third of the season.

57.3 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 95th percentile. His ice went 24-16 against an expectation of 30.79-22.96 — four goals of scoring missing and three conceded above expectation, on the club’s shutdown line.

The Finesse Game

119 attempts at a median of 28 feet with 32 per cent from inside 20, converting at 7.6 per cent for 9 goals. He scored 43 in a season once, in 2017-18, and has not been near it since.

20 assists in 53 games. The value now is positional: he wins the draw that begins the shift, he supports the puck, and he is the reason the line spends the shift in the other end.

The Physical Game

6-0 and 190 and he defends with his stick and his positioning rather than with contact. He blocks shots and he does not initiate much.

4 penalty minutes in 53 games is among the lowest totals of anybody in this edition. He does not foul, he does not retaliate, and he is a first-unit penalty killer on the 4th-best unit in the league.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick of Anaheim in 2011 who was taken in the expansion draft and became a 43-goal scorer in his first season here — 738 games and 446 points, and a Stanley Cup.

He is 32. He has played all nine seasons of this franchise’s existence and there are very few of those left.

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

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.

disciplined· stays out of the box
0.08 penalty minutes a game over 53, 1st percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.75) · 35% keep it
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“he wins the draw that begins the shift, he supports the puck, and he is the reason the line spends the shift in the other end.”
defensively-responsiblea strength· comes back; can be trusted with a lead
“The value now is positional: he wins the draw that begins the shift, he supports the puck, and he is the reason the line spends the shift in the other end.”
defends-with-reacha strength· takes the puck before the contact happens
“6-0 and 190 and he defends with his stick and his positioning rather than with contact.”
shot-blockera strength· gets in front of it
“He blocks shots and he does not initiate much.”
penalty-killera strength· trusted a man short
“He does not foul, he does not retaliate, and he is a first-unit penalty killer on the 4th-best unit in the league.”
fouls-when-beatena strength· the stick foul that follows losing a step
“**4 penalty minutes in 53 games** is among the lowest totals of anybody in this edition.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 684 minutes

Expected goals: 57.3%; 96th pct
Shot attempts: 55.5%; 93rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 24 for, 16 against. Expected: 30.8 and 23.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

80th

Numbers

96th

The two rank him within 16 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 — 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 · 53 games

Top speed: 23.0 mph; 84th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 2.34 a game
Distance: 2.75 miles a game
Hardest shot: 89.4 mph; 75th 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 · 684 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: VGK took 53.5% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 57.3% — 3.8 above the club he did it on.
The role: Fourth line, 684 minutes at five-on-five — 27th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Brett Howden	53.6%	59.2%	50.4%
Noah Hanifin	60.1%	55.6%	54.8%
Alex Pietrangelo	58.4%	56.6%	52.4%

53.6% together, 59.2% for him apart and 50.4% for Howden apart. He was carrying it: the share stayed with him and left Howden behind.

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

176 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 9 of them goals. His median goal came from 23 feet. 32% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 28% from beyond forty.