Bowen Byram

Last Season

Eleven goals and 31 assists in all 82 games — 42 points, plus-15, at 22:20 a night. His five-on-five work was done in Buffalo, where the goals went 80-56 in his favour across 1,538 minutes.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the asset and it is a genuine one — he is among the better skating defencemen in the league and he uses it to leave his own zone with the puck rather than to hand it over.

Forty-two points is a legitimate top-pair offensive return. The shot is a point shot used sensibly: 192 unblocked attempts, median 42 feet, twelve goals, and enough of them get through to matter.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 205, and he defends with feet and stick. Forty-eight penalty minutes. He is not clearing the crease and he can be outmuscled in front, which is why his best seasons have come beside a heavier partner.

The Intangibles

Fifty per cent of the expected goals, 53rd percentile, and 49.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 51st — dead average, in the heaviest minutes on a club that led the league in finishing.

Dead average is a criticism on most rosters. On this one it makes him comfortably the best defenceman, since every incumbent sits in the bottom fifteenth percentile.

He is 25, the fourth pick in 2019, a Stanley Cup winner as a teenager, and on his third organisation. Chicago has bought the one thing it had none of. Whether an average top-four defenceman looks average behind this forward group is the question.