Charle-Edouard D'Astous

Last Season

Six goals and 23 assists in 70 games — 29 points, minus-four, at 18:45 a night with 112 penalty minutes.

His first NHL season, at 28.

The Finesse Game

A hundred and twenty-four unblocked attempts from a median of 44 feet, six goals. Twenty-three assists in 70 games is a genuinely good return for a rookie defenceman and it is the shot from the point that produces most of them.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 211, and the penalty minutes tell it — 112 in 70 games is among the six highest totals in the league, level with Adam Klapka, and it comes from a man who spent eight years being told he was not an NHL player and arrived determined to be one.

He clears his crease, finishes checks, and fights.

The Intangibles

Fifty-five point six per cent of the expected goals, 90th percentile, and 53.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 86th, across 1,175 minutes — with the chances 51.0 to 40.8 in his favour and the goals 61-46.

That is a top-pair season in every underlying respect, produced by a twenty-eight-year-old rookie who was undrafted out of Rimouski and spent his twenties in the minors and in Europe.

Seven points in his last ten, two of them goals. There is no projection to make here and no development curve to wait on. He is 28, this is what he is, and it is a second-pair defenceman on a Stanley Cup contender.