Adam Pelech

Last Season

Four goals and 12 assists in all 82 games — 16 points, plus-four, at 20:53 a night with 1,453 five-on-five minutes.

The Finesse Game

There is essentially none. Two hundred and eight unblocked attempts from a median of 50 feet, four per cent inside twenty, four goals. Thirty goals in 642 career games.

Twelve assists in a full season of top-pair minutes. He moves it to the first available man and defends.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 212, and a genuinely excellent defensive defenceman — he closes gaps early, blocks shots, and is hard to beat one-on-one. Fifty penalty minutes.

The skating is good enough that he is rarely obliged to foul, which for a man playing these minutes is the distinguishing feature.

The Intangibles

Fifty-three per cent of the shot attempts, 82nd percentile — the best mark on the club — and 50.3 per cent of the expected goals, 56th, across fourteen hundred minutes of the hardest assignment available.

The goals went 45-59 against him, which on a club that under-finished by twenty is not his doing.

He is 32, a third-round pick, in his eleventh season with one organisation, and has never been an All-Star and never will be. He is the best defensive defenceman on a team that finished 28th in expected goals against, which tells you what the rest of it looks like.