In the 2025–26 NHL season, Edmonton Oilers defenceman Jake Walman was on-ice for 3.6 goals allowed per hour at 5-on-5. Among all defencemen with a minimum of 500 minutes played, that rate ranks dead last.

Put differently, no regular NHL blueliner saw pucks end up in his net at a higher rate than Walman did.

In total, the Oilers were out-scored 52-36 with Walman on-ice, equating to an atrocious 40 per cent goal share. Some of that stems from Edmonton’s inadequate goaltending, but the underlying numbers don’t let Walman off the hook. EvolvingHockey rated his impact on suppressing expected goals in the bottom 10 among all defencemen in the league, and no Oilers defender was on the ice for more high-danger chances against.

Safe to say, it was not a good year for Walman.

But Walman was not always like this. Just one season earlier in 2024–25, he posted strong underlying results while playing top-pair minutes on a dreadful San Jose Sharks team. After being traded to Edmonton at the trade deadline, he delivered quality top-four minutes during the Oilers’ run to the 2025 Stanley Cup Final.

As Walman enters the first year of his seven-year, $49 million extension in the 2026–27 season, can he bounce back and re-establish himself as a reliable top-four option for the Oilers? Let’s dig in.

*All data via EvolvingHockey, Natural Stat Trick, AllThreeZones and PuckIQ

How good was Jake Walman at his best?

In the prior three seasons to 2025–26, Walman’s two-way underlying numbers were quite strong, and in many ways. Here’s a brief summary:

EvolvingHockey’s RAPM model rates Walman’s offensive and defensive impact considerably above average. There’s no doubt he’s an offensively inclined player, but his defensive impacts during that stretch also graded out strongly.

A major driver of those results was Walman’s puck-moving ability. He ranked in the 84th percentile in controlled zone exits per 60 and sat in the 65th percentile in exit success rate, showing he could break the puck out with possession at high volume........

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