Adrian Kempe

Last Season

Thirty-six goals and 73 points in 81 games, plus-14, on nineteen minutes a night — a career high in goals and the third straight season he has carried this team’s offense without much argument about it.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the engine. He is a genuinely fast straight-line skater with a long stride, and unusually for a player that quick, he does not need the puck to be dangerous — he beats defencemen to open ice and arrives with his stick down.

The shot is a real one. A hard, quick wrister he releases while still moving, and he scores a lot of goals from the tops of the circles that most wingers do not attempt. He is not a natural playmaker; the passes are honest rather than creative, and he does his best work as the finisher on somebody else’s play.

He killed penalties, took defensive-zone starts, and spent 61 percent of his five-on-five ice time with Kopitar, which is the strongest forward partnership on the roster and the reason both of their numbers look the way they do.

The Physical Game

Six-two and 205 and he plays a full-contact game without being a hitter for its own sake. He goes to the net, takes the punishment that comes with it, and is hard to knock off a puck in open ice because of the skating base. Fifty-eight penalty minutes is about right for a player who is engaged rather than reckless.

He plays a heavy schedule and misses very little.

The Intangibles

He arrived as a first-round pick who took five years to become anything, and the patience has been repaid several times over. He is now the player this team leans on when it needs a goal and the one it sends out to protect a lead, which is a combination almost nobody offers.

The honest limit is that he is a very good first-line winger rather than a driver. On a team without a genuine number-one centre, that distinction gets exposed in a playoff series.