Charlie Coyle

Last Season

Twenty goals and 38 assists in all 82 games — 58 points, plus-three, at 18:06 a night with seven power-play goals. His 1,032nd career game.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is the reason this is a career year at 34. Sixty-two per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, median 16, with only seven per cent from beyond forty — and 24 goals came out of it.

He has no speed left and has replaced it entirely with position. He arrives at the net, he is six foot three and 221 pounds, and he puts back what comes loose.

Thirty-eight assists is a career high and comes from the same place: he holds pucks in the corners until somebody is open.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 221, and he plays the heavy game without the penalties — fourteen penalty minutes in a full season. He wins faceoffs and he is very hard to take the puck from.

The Intangibles

Fifty-one point seven per cent of the expected goals, 69th percentile, in 1,078 minutes.

Nine points in his last ten, six of them goals. He is 34, a fourteen-year veteran, and having the best offensive season of his life on a club that needed a centre.

The lesson on this page is the same one Zucker’s and Staal’s carry: a forward who loses a step and starts shooting from sixteen feet instead of thirty scores more, not less.