Jesse Granger just wrote an amazing article on the athletic about William Karlsson and his impact in the last game. I’ll leave a direct [link](https://theathletic.com/4490020/2023/05/04/golden-knights-karlsson-mcdavid-draisaitl/?source=emp_shared_article) to it, but also a quote:
>Leon Draisaitl took 26 shifts for the Edmonton Oilers during Wednesday’s Game 1 loss to the Golden Knights, playing a game-high 24 minutes, 6 seconds. On 17 of those shifts, he wasn’t matched up with Vegas’ William Karlsson, and he scored four goals – an average of one every 4.25 shifts.
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>On the nine shifts in which Draisaitl faced Karlsson, he scored zero.
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>Karlsson faced Draisaitl more than any other Oiler on Wednesday night, sharing the ice for 8:04, and managed to hold him off the scoresheet during that time. The player Karlsson played the second-most minutes against? Connor McDavid, who was also held in check during his seven minutes, 46 seconds, facing Karlsson.
There are some amazing videos of his defensive plays in the article as well. His offensive game hasn’t been amazing through the regular season but he exploded in the playoffs.
by RoombaArmy
2 Comments
He gets called overrated so often cause he doesn’t pot 30+ every season, but not many players pot goals vs him. He absolutely earns that contract of his.
Oh and he’ll be a dad soon, so his dad strength is only going to get more prominent from here.
Wild Bill has been consistently my favorite Golden Knight since season 1. Is he the flashiest? No, but he’s far and away our best defensive minded forward (even more than Stone) that he makes up for it with being one of the best shut down centermen in the league. He’s highly underrated amongst the league because our team is so stacked with our dynamos that he’s forgotten about.
When we got Jack there were rumors that Karly was gone because we had great depth at center and no cap space. I told myself and my wife at the time, “if Wild Bill gets moved then I’m following him.” He’s so much more than points to this team and I’m so happy that people are finally seeing how important to the Golden Knights he is. He’s like Danault, not gonna show up on the score sheet as often as you’d like but will absolutely shut down the top offensive players on any team.