Armchair Hockey Scout Beta
84

William Lagesson

Detroit Red Wings Defense

No goals in a hundred career games, and the second-best chance share on this roster.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2019-20EDM8000-4000080.011:52
2020-21EDM1902209000110.014:09
2021-22EDM/MTL33055+313000330.012:35
2023-24TOR/ANA40044+332000190.014:48
2024-25 so far
Career10001111+254000710.013:43

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

Forty games in Anaheim, no goals and 4 assists, 32 penalty minutes, 14:48 a night and plus-3. He took 53.1 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 542 minutes, the 75th percentile, and his ice went 26-27 against an expectation of 22.38-19.75.

A 53.1 per cent chance share on the club that finished 30th in the league is a genuinely odd number and it is the second-best on this roster. Forty games is a small sample and it is the reason he has a job.

The Finesse Game

No goals in 40 games and none in 100 career games on 71 shots. Nineteen shots last season at a median of 54 feet with nothing at all from inside 20.

Eleven career assists. There is no offensive game of any kind and there has never been the pretence of one.

The Physical Game

He is 6-2 and 211 and finishes his checks. Thirty-two penalty minutes in 40 games is a high rate for a third-pair defenceman and most of it is contact rather than sticks.

He clears the front of his own net and he blocks shots, which is the entire job description and the whole reason a man with no points is in the league.

The Intangibles

A fourth-round pick in 2014 out of Gothenburg, four partial seasons and 100 games across Edmonton, Montreal and Anaheim. He is plus-2 across all of them.

He is the seventh defenceman. Detroit will play him twenty games and he will not score in any of them.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 542 minutes

Expected goals
53.1%
76th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
49.2%
47th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 26 for, 27 against. Expected: 22.4 and 19.8.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
2nd
Numbers
76th

The numbers rank him 74 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 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 50 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 with TOR · 404 minutes at five-on-five

  • Simon Benoit27%
  • Jake McCabe20%
  • Morgan Rielly14%

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, 2023-24

The club
ANA took 45.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.1% — 7.2 above the club he did it on.
The role
542 minutes at five-on-five — 20th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
John Tavares56.5%52.1%54.9%
Max Domi55.3%52.5%50.6%
Tyler Bertuzzi61.1%50.7%56.0%

56.5% together, 52.1% for him apart and 54.9% for Tavares apart. He was worse away from Tavares, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Tavares did.

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

28 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 0 of them goals. 0% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 75% from beyond forty.