Chris Kreider

Last Season

Twenty-two goals and 28 assists in 75 games, eight of the goals on the power play. Seventeen minutes a night in a supporting role after fourteen seasons and 958 games.

The Finesse Game

The skating has not gone, which at 35 is the whole story. He is still the fastest big man on the ice most nights and he still uses it the same way — straight at the net, with the puck or without it.

Where he scores from is the point. The median unblocked attempt of his season came from 16 feet, the shortest on this roster by five feet, and 56 per cent came from inside twenty. Nobody else here lives in that water. On a team full of young players learning to shoot from the outside, he is the standing demonstration of the alternative.

The passing was never the strength and is not now. Twenty-eight assists is what he gives you.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 232 pounds, and he uses all of it going to the net. He screens, he tips, he takes the cross-check and stays. This is a hard skill and it is the one that ages best, because it never depended on being quick.

Thirty-four penalty minutes. He is not a fighter and never was; he is heavy in the places where being heavy scores goals.

The Intangibles

The five-on-five numbers were the best on the club alongside Carlsson — 54.6 per cent of the expected goals, 56.4 per cent of the shot attempts, 94th percentile. He was plus in the goal column, 45-37, on a team that was comprehensively minus.

His last ten games produced six points and no goals, which at his age is the number that will get quoted. The attempts kept coming from the same 16 feet, so it reads more like a cold run than a decline. Watch it anyway.