By shorthanded goals against I meant shorthanded goals scored against you while your on the PP. Those are 100% included. So when you’re on the PP a lot but don’t PK much like Karlsson, you’re going to get minuses because they don’t balance out. Karlsson was on the ice for 11 shorthanded goals against, but only 1 shorthanded goals for. That’s -10 onto his plus minus right there.
Also, as I said empty net goals against are the big one, and like shorthanded goal differential something that has near zero bearing on overall value. Karlsson was on the ice for 4 goals for and 21 goals against with the empty net, because San Jose was behind a lot so we’re regularly pulling their goalie and Karlsson would always be out there to try to score. That’s -17 right there. Now with the other team pulling the goalie, Karlsson was on for 6 goals for and 2 goals against. So that’s +4. But since San Jose rarely had the lead that doesn’t make much of a dent in his empty net numbers, so he was still -13 overall in empty net situations.
So that’s a combined -23 that Karlsson had from empty net and special teams. Since he was -26 overall, that means he was actually only -3 at ES. San Jose, however, was -52 at 5v5 and -60 at ES. Karlsson performed much, much better in terms of goal differential than his team. The idea that he was a liability is nonsense and not based on fact.
As for his career, he’s -28 at 5v5 while his teams have combined for -248 at 5v5. And as we see above, ES numbers vary little from 5v5 numbers once empty net is removed (those might have been the ones you are looking at). Karlsson has been on for a lot of goals in his career, and moreso than his expected goals to the point that it suggests he’s worse than his underlying numbers. Still, his ES/5v5 offense is so incredible that it more than makes up for that and he’s very clearly a positive on his teams. He’s just rarely played for good ones. It’s funny when people talk about him for his PP prowess because he’s generally a more valuable ES player because his offense at ES is a decent amount better than his PP offense.