It will be interesting to see whether Henrique brings the hoped-for first-round draft pick, especially with retention.

Agreed. If not, Id still probably prefer more draft compensation to Wahl though. Haven’t been watching NYI but his stats are 🤮

I keep thinking that Wahlstrom is gonna pop off wherever he winds up next. Someone just needs to realize he's an offensive player and not keep sticking him on bottom-6 defensive lines.

I know his linemates aren’t doing him any favors, but he starts half his shifts in the offensive zone and has like 6 points this year. And his advanced stats are horrendous

When you start looking at his WOWY stats at 5v5, I feel like you can start seeing hope for him as an offensive force. Since the beginning of 2021-22, he's played almost identical amounts at 5v5 with Barzal as his center (539:49) and Pageau (519:27.) With Barzal, the Isles control 50.7% of the chances and have outscored their opponents 22-14; with Pageau he's down to 43.4% of the chances and only a 20-19 GF/GA. Numbers get worse when you look at the 100+ minutes he's inexplicably spent on Casey Cizikas' wing in that time.

It really comes down to not trying to fit his square peg into a round hole - if you accept the fact that he's going to occasionally have a defensive issue, I think you're gonna wind up with a very good offense-first winger.

I feel like the more helpful stat would be how Barzal’s line fared in the 500+ minutes without him with an alternative in his place. Because imo, Barzal’s line controlling 50.7% of chances actually seems low, especially since Barzal historically starts a pretty disproportionate number of his shifts in the offensive zone. It’s great they converted on that, but that’s unlikely to stick over a large enough sample if they’re only generating half the chances.

The fact that he requires an elite center to be decent, and still only generates 50% of the chances when that’s the case feels concerning, no?

I think even the defensive issues are overblown too. He's not going to win the Selke anytime soon but he's adequate (if he's scoring).

This is per NaturalStatTrick, 5v5, 2021-22 through today:

Wahlstrom CF% with Barzal: 50.69% (539:49 TOI)
Wahlstrom CF% without Barzal: 44.98% (807:58 TOI)
Barzal CF% without Wahlstrom: 49.82% (1331:27 TOI)

It's hard to judge the few high-end Islanders forwards on possession numbers, because so much of Trotz (and then Lambert's) gameplan was bend-but-don't-break, forcing the other team into taking low-percentage shots and aiming for higher-danger chances on offense. The 2021-22 Isles were -302 in shot differential, last year's team made the playoffs at -20, and this year's team is hanging around the margins of the race at -212 through 60 GP. Anything 48% and up has usually been the "better" side of Isles forwards over the past few years.

I wish Wahlstrom had a little more run with Brock Nelson in that time - Nelson is a very good 2C and Wahlstrom generally had good possession numbers with him, but we're talking about 98:33 together over 3 seasons - not enough to really glean much useful data from. But they generally were deployed offensively and that date looked favorably on that pair in their time together - I would hope that Wahlstrom getting time with another offensive line would bode well for whatever team finally uses him correctly.

Yeah I mean maybe I’m wrong, but my takeaway from those numbers is that Wahl must be with an elite center in order to be on a line that contributes just a neutral on-ice impact for his team, and otherwise has a notably negative impact.

Meanwhile the elite line has no statistically meaningful uptick from him being on that line or not (That said, it’s not a negative impact)

I’m with you that I hope he finds his way, but it’s not a very optimistic start