Brandon Hagel

Last Season

Thirty-six goals and 38 assists in 71 games — 74 points, plus-34, at 19:46 a night with five power-play goals and 58 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

Three hundred and twenty-six unblocked attempts — the most on the club — 36 goals, median 27 feet with 39 per cent from inside twenty.

Three hundred and seventy-one points in 446 career games, and he was a hundred and fifty-ninth overall pick whom Chicago traded at twenty-three.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 186, and he plays far heavier than that — he forechecks like a man trying to hurt somebody, kills penalties, and takes the other team’s best line every night. Fifty-eight penalty minutes.

The skating is the tool: he is among the quickest forwards in the league and the entire game is built on arriving first.

The Intangibles

Fifty-seven point nine per cent of the expected goals, 97th percentile, and 57.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 96th — the best figures on the club and among the best in the league — across 1,019 minutes, with the chances 56.2 to 40.9 in his favour.

That is a fifteen-goal edge in expected goals for one skater, and it came in the hardest minutes Tampa had to give.

Eleven points in his last ten, five of them goals. He is 28, and on a roster with Kucherov, Point, Guentzel and Cirelli he may be the most complete player. He is certainly the most valuable one in a seven-game series.