Christian Dvorak

Last Season

Eighteen goals and 33 assists in 80 games — 51 points, plus-11, at 18:28 a night. A career high at 30.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is among the most extreme in this book. Sixty-four per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, with a median of fourteen and only nine per cent from beyond forty.

Only O’Reilly, Voronkov and Rempe shoot from closer, and two of those are net-front specialists rather than second-line centres.

Eighteen goals from 223 attempts is a fair conversion, and thirty-three assists is the best number of his career.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 190, and he is not physical. Twenty-seven penalty minutes in 80 games. He wins faceoffs and protects pucks by position rather than force.

The Intangibles

Forty-seven point two per cent of the expected goals, 28th percentile, and 45.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 16th, with the chances 44.2 to 49.6 against across 1,124 minutes.

That is the weakest regular-forward mark on the club, and it sits next to the best shot chart. Both are true: he is standing in exactly the right place and the shifts around it are being lost.

Nine points in his last ten, four of them goals. He is 30, a second-round pick, and had the best season of his life on a club that has finally worked out how to defend.