Axel Sandin-Pellikka

Last Season

Seven goals and 14 assists in 68 games — 21 points, minus-20, at 16:13 a night. His first NHL season, at 20.

The Finesse Game

The skating and the puck-moving are the reasons he went seventeenth overall, and both are visible. He escapes pressure, he joins the rush, and 21 points from a rookie defenceman is a genuinely good return.

The shot is a point shot: 121 unblocked attempts from a median of 51 feet, two per cent inside twenty, seven goals. Seven from that distance will not repeat.

The Physical Game

Six foot even and 186 pounds, and it is the whole difficulty. Eighteen penalty minutes in 68 games. He cannot clear a crease, cannot hold a man out of the slot, and is moved off pucks by wingers.

The Intangibles

The two columns disagree sharply. He was on for 50.3 per cent of the shot attempts — 60th percentile, which for a twenty-year-old defenceman is impressive — and only 44.7 per cent of the expected goals, 13th percentile.

Read together: the puck moves the right way when he is out there, and the chances he concedes are much more dangerous than the ones he helps create. Which is precisely what a slight, gifted, twenty-year-old defenceman produces while he learns where to stand.

Four points in his last ten. Detroit is developing him alongside Edvinsson behind Seider and Chiarot, and the minus-twenty is a coaching decision as much as a scouting one.