Adam Fantilli

Last Season

Twenty-four goals and 35 assists in all 82 games — 59 points, minus-13, at 18:54 a night. Two hundred and fourteen shots on goal.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the standout and it is genuinely exceptional — a six-foot-two centre who is among the faster players in the league in a straight line, and who does not lose the puck while doing it.

The shot is heavy without being precise. Three hundred and twenty-three unblocked attempts, 24 goals, median distance 26 feet with 36 per cent inside twenty. That is fine and it is not what a first-line centre eventually does; the men scoring thirty on this roster shoot from sixteen and twelve.

Thirty-five assists at 21 says the playmaking is arriving on schedule.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 205, and he plays a hard game — thirty-eight penalty minutes, willing on the forecheck, and difficult to knock off the puck at speed.

The Intangibles

Fifty-three point four per cent of the expected goals, 79th percentile, with the expected goals 60.7 to 53.0 in his favour across 1,250 minutes — and the actual goals 50-52 against, which is the club-wide pattern here.

The minus-13 is not describing him.

He is 21, the third pick in 2023, and 140 points into a career that is tracking properly. Seven points in his last ten. The question is not whether he becomes a first-line centre; it is whether he learns to shoot from ten feet closer.