Andre Burakovsky

Last Season

Eleven goals and 22 assists in 75 games — 33 points, minus-32, at 16:25 a night. His five-on-five work was done in Chicago.

The Finesse Game

The hands were always the case for him and the consistency never arrived. A hundred and twenty-nine unblocked attempts, twelve goals, median 26 feet with 32 per cent from inside twenty.

Four hundred and twenty points in 771 career games is a real career, and it includes a Stanley Cup in Colorado and a 61-point season. Thirty-three points in 75 games is well under any of it.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 203, and he does not use it. Sixteen penalty minutes in 75 games. He avoids the interior, does not forecheck heavily, and has been criticised for exactly this at every stop.

The Intangibles

Forty-five point eight per cent of the expected goals, 17th percentile, and 46.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 20th, with the chances 43.7 to 51.7 against across a thousand minutes.

Chicago was the worst team in the league by expected goals, which explains some of it and not the minus-32.

He is 31 and joins a club where every regular forward except Foegele posted a top-quartile on-ice rate. On this roster he is either the beneficiary of a very good structure or the man who breaks it, and there is no third outcome.