Brendan Gallagher

Last Season

Seven goals and 16 assists in 77 games — 23 points, even in plus-minus, at 12:21 a night with 39 penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in Montreal.

His 911th career game and his 487th point. Two hundred and forty-six career goals.

The Finesse Game

A hundred and seventy-two unblocked attempts, seven goals, median 22 feet with 47 per cent from inside twenty.

The location is where it has always been — he has spent fifteen years standing in the blue paint at five foot nine — and the finish has gone. Seven goals is a career low in a full season.

Sixteen assists is the honest rate now.

The Physical Game

Five foot nine and 185 pounds, and one of the most physically punished players of his generation — broken hands, broken fingers, a broken jaw, all of it collected in the same six square feet in front of a goaltender.

Thirty-nine penalty minutes.

The Intangibles

Fifty per cent of the expected goals, 53rd percentile, and 51 per cent of the shot attempts, 67th, across 849 minutes in Montreal, with the goals 44-36 in his favour.

Level chance share at 34, in a fourth-line role, on a good club.

He is 34, a hundred and forty-seventh overall pick, and fourteen seasons for one organisation before this. He arrives in Vancouver, the city he grew up in, on a club that finished second-last in the league in chance share and could use somebody who has never once been afraid of the front of a net.