2023-24 Season in Review: Erik Karlsson

What a first season in Pittsburgh it was for Erik Karlsson, in ways good and bad.

Vitals

Player: Erik Karlsson
Born: May 31, 1990 (Age 33 currently, 2023-24 was his age-32 season)
Height: 6’ 0”
Weight: 190 pounds
Hometown: Landsbro, SWE
Shoots: Right
Draft: 2008 first round (15th overall) by the Ottawa Senators
2023-24 Statistics: 82 games played, 11 goals, 45 assists = 56 points
Contract Status: Karlsson is signed for three more seasons after this (through 2026-27). The Penguins are on the hook for $10.0 million of his salary cap hit.

Monthly Splits

via Yahoo!

Story of the Season

All eyes were on the 2022-23 Norris winner after being traded to Pittsburgh. Like many offensive-minded defensemen, the tolerance for weighing mistakes against offsetting positive contributions tends to leads observers to see what they choose to see in Erik Karlsson’s play.

At it’s core and what can’t be disputed: Karlsson finished 13th among NHL defenders in points with 56. He was 17th in total ice time per game. He played all 82 games. The power play that he was at the helm of floundered mightily. At times Karlsson controlled the game and owned the puck, making great decisions and heady plays. At times he got lost in the shuffle and wasn’t making the best decisions.

In the end and in totality, Karlsson gave the Penguins a top tier defensive performance on par with his hefty salary (The Athletic’s model rated him at a $9.6 million market value). Yet, at the same time, he was not able to tip the scales of the team’s season and give complete justification to adding another veteran star player to a team of aging players. It’s all there to be had.

Regular season 5v5 advanced stats

Data via Natural Stat Trick. Ranking is out of nine defensemen on the team who qualified by playing a minimum of 150 minutes.

Corsi For%: 54.7% (1st)
Goals For%: 52.1% (3rd)
xGF%: 54.3% (1st)
Scoring Chance %: 55.0% (1st)
High Danger Scoring Chance%: 57.2% (1st)
5v5 on-ice shooting%: 8.05% (5th)
On-ice save%: .910% (6th)
Goals/60: 0.23 (3rd)
Assist/60: 0.91 (3rd)
Points/60: 1.14 (2nd)

—For the first time in recent memory, Kris Letang was not the Penguins’ best defenseman. That mantle was taken over by Karlsson, who operated similarly but better than Letang in just about every meaningful category you can name. On paper, Karlsson had a fairly dominant season; Pittsburgh was able to rack up a ton more scoring chances and out-performed the opponent with him on the ice.

Charts n’at

Via HockeyViz and JFresh Hockey

Karlsson and countryman Marcus Pettersson formed a beautiful and almost instantaneous on-ice connection. It made a lot of sense from the beginning, both player’s styles and abilities compliment the other’s almost perfectly. In the middle of the season, the Pens did try to experiment to see if splitting the two could be balanced out, but neither P.O. Joseph nor Ryan Graves were able to hold up their end of the bargain as a Karlsson partner.

He’s active in the offensive zone, working mostly from the right side of the ice but certainly unafraid to chase the puck and play across the whole zone.

This might be Karlsson’s season in a snapshot: with him on the ice the Pens offense generated 3.25 expected goals per hour and were dangerous all over the ice (in large part due to his puck moving and shot chance generation, as we’ll see in a future visualization). With Karlsson on the bench, the team’s xGF dropped to just 2.61.

This is the defensive outlook from the view above, the Pens had to sacrifice nothing defensively to get that great offensive jolt from Karlsson. xGF numbers are flat either way, 2.67 with him on the ice, 2.65 with him off it.

These figures really stand out. Karlsson remained one of the elite and premiere defensemen in the league in 2023-24 with the puck on his stick. He keeps his head up and is able to use his vision and passing to create a lot of offense from anywhere on the ice. Whether it’s breakouts, starting a rush or working in the offensive zone, Karlsson is definitely a player the team wants on the ice as much as possible because he will consistently drive positive results happening. Defensively, he’s as advertised to not be particularly strong and prone to get lost in space and exposed at times, but honestly I thought he was fine overall and pleasantly surprised that he was not typically a liability or completely weak player in his own end.

What was wrong with the Pens’ power play in 2023-24 could fill volumes. The above view offers some insight though: they had no threats on the left side of the ice. The power play was essentially Karlsson and Evgeni Malkin working the points and to the right side (where it’s brown at least) and too stagnant for PKers to get in the shooting lanes and take it away. They were fine in front of the net when they could actually get it there, but failed to score in many instances. The Pens’ PP needs to become more dynamic, less static and have threats from anywhere on the ice. They basically had nothing on the left side and it became easy for opponents to clamp down on the half/side of the ice that they were always working towards.

Pretty much a steady as she goes season for Karlsson. Even though he was 33, he was just about as impactful in WAR as he has always been. Who knows how much longer this later stage of his prime will keep going, but for now it’s still there.

Highlights

Questions to ponder

Will season two in Pittsburgh lead to more familiarity and better on ice results? It’s a known trope that defenders can take a while to settle in and can perform better in Year 2 than than they do in Year 1, so how much of that will apply to Karlsson?

Ideal 2024-25

A new assistant coach will be in charge of the Pens’ power play, and perhaps will take note of Karlsson on the left side for Team Sweden at the World Championships. Beyond looking for a specific number of points (which can fluctuate for a defender based on factors out of their control), an ideal 2024-25 for Karlsson has to include better performance and play on the power play, to go along with the standard inputs (23-25 minutes per game, positive impressions on shot and goal based stats, offensive production).

Bottom line

With the way the trade that brought Karlsson was received as a sea-changing, franchise-altering massive W, it was always going to be difficult to live up to the hype out on the ice. Pittsburgh traded virtually all their bad contracts and unwanted players to end up giving a 14th overall pick to receive in Karlsson. Karlsson ended up being a 24-minute per game, point producing defenseman that should remain one of the league’s top players for a while longer. By any objective definition, it was a bold and massive net gain for the Pens (who, let’s recall, not too long ago ended up trading a future 15th overall pick for Kasperi Kapanen).

That success aside, it still ended up being a season that could reasonably be described as leaving fans, coaches and players alike frustrated, hollow and wanting more. Karlsson has to own his part of that, just like any other big time player that was expected to get at least a little more out of the season individually and as a group.