Alexander Petrovic

Last Season

Two goals and eight assists in 54 games — 10 points, plus-two, at 15:21 a night with 47 penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in Dallas.

The Finesse Game

Seventy-one unblocked attempts from a median of 54 feet, and none at all from inside twenty. Two goals.

Sixty points in 323 career games. He is a defensive defenceman of the oldest kind and the club wants nothing else from him.

The Physical Game

Six foot five, 215, and it is the whole of it. Forty-seven penalty minutes, willing to fight, and effective in front of his own net.

The skating is poor. He is beaten wide by average NHL wingers and cannot recover, which is why a man this size has never held a top-four job for long.

The Intangibles

An awkward split: 48.8 per cent of the expected goals, 43rd percentile, against only 44.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 11th, in 800 minutes. His pair was heavily outshot and the chances stayed close, which on a Dallas team built to concede the perimeter is the system working rather than the man.

The goals went 44-26 in his favour, which is a large positive gap and belongs to Oettinger and DeSmith.

He is 34, returning to the club that drafted him in 2010, as a seventh defenceman. There is not much more to say than that.