Aaron Ekblad

Last Season

Four goals and 22 assists in 72 games — 26 points, minus-five, at 22:29 a night with 55 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

The offence went years ago and nobody minds. A hundred and fifty-four unblocked attempts from a median of 50 feet, six per cent inside twenty, four goals — the lowest total of his career.

A hundred and twenty-two goals in 804 games says what he was as a young man. Twenty-two assists says what he is now: a defenceman who moves it to Forsling and defends.

The Physical Game

Six foot four, 220, and he plays a properly heavy game. Fifty-five penalty minutes, a willingness to fight, and he is the man Florida sends to clear a crease.

The body has taken a great deal — a broken leg, a shoulder, a run of springs played visibly hurt — and 72 games is a reasonable season by his standards now.

The Intangibles

Fifty point seven per cent of the expected goals, 60th percentile, and 52.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 80th, across 1,221 minutes of the hardest available assignment.

The goals went 50-36 in his favour, which on a club whose goaltending was the league’s worst is the second-best margin here and quietly remarkable.

One point in his last ten. He is 30, the first pick in 2014, two Stanley Cups, and a career that stopped being about points a long time ago and got better for it.