William Wallinder produces like a top pair for the Red Wings
The Detroit defenseman sits at the 85th percentile of 195 peers in points per 60 minutes on a usage that ranks at the 16th percentile.
William Wallinder scores like a defenseman who gets far more ice time than he does. His rate is 1.72 points per 60 minutes. Among 195 defensemen, that puts him at the 85th percentile. The peer median is 0.9. He is nearly double it. The gap between what he produces and what the Detroit Red Wings ask of him is the story here. It is not a small gap, and it has held across the 9 games of data the model has on him this season.
The usage side is quieter. Wallinder takes 4.3 percent of the team's playing time on average, which ranks 12th among 22 Red Wings in the data. Against defensemen league-wide, his usage sits at the 16th percentile. That is a small slice of the ice. It has grown lately. Over the last 3 games his share of the team's playing time is 5.1 percent, up from 3.9 percent over the 6 games before that, a rise of 31 percent. His minutes moved with it, from 14 a game to 18.5, a rise of 32 percent. That is a ten-point-plus move, and it is a story.
Wallinder is a defenseman, 24 years old, wearing 54 for the Detroit Red Wings. He was born in 2002 and stands 196 centimeters and 95 kilograms. He reached Detroit through the draft: round 2, pick 32 in 2020, the first selection of the second round. The team has had 14 games this season, and the data has box scores for 9 of his. That is enough to read a trend. It is not a long career sample, and the piece treats it as the short one it is. His page is at William Wallinder.
His role has not changed. That matters, because the minutes and the production rate are not the result of a new assignment. They are the result of the same job done more often and, so far, done well. One caution sits in the numbers. His points per 60 minutes over the last 5 games is 1.46, down from the season figure of 1.72, a drop of 15 percent. That is still well above the peer median of 0.9. The last 5 games read 1 point, 0, 0, 1 and 0, with shots of 1, 1, 1, 0 and 2. The minutes in those games ran 13.57, 13.37, 17.85, 17.45 and 20.13. The ice time is climbing faster than the scoring.
The Red Wings play at the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday, November 3, at 7:00 PM EST. Tampa Bay is 8-3-2 and has had 2 days of rest. The number to watch is on the defensive side of their ledger. The Lightning have allowed 4.4 goals a game over their last 5, against a league average of 3.2. That is a gap of more than a goal a night. A defenseman who produces at the 85th percentile of his position is a fair candidate to find room against a team giving up that many. The matchup is here.
The expectation is about the ice time, because that is where his role has moved. His season average is 15.5 minutes on the ice, and his last 5 games average 16.5. His last 3 games averaged 18.5. Against the Lightning, Wallinder should play at least 17 minutes on the ice. That is one step up the ladder from his 5-game average and below his recent 3-game level. If he gets there, the team is trusting a rate of production that already sits well above most of the 195 defensemen he is measured against. The result goes on the page whether it holds or not.
How it went
Wallinder logged 15.92 minutes on the ice, short of the 17 minutes we expected, so the expectation missed. He finished with 0 shots and 0 points in that time. Detroit lost 4-2 to Tampa Bay, and the miss on his ice time is a small piece of a game the Red Wings did not win.
Written from the numbers listed below. Reviewed by Paul Koziol, editor. Corrections are shown on the piece. Editorial policy.