Clayton Keller

Last Season

Twenty-six goals and 62 assists in all 82 games — 88 points, plus-21, at 19:05 a night with 38 penalty minutes.

His 683rd career game and his 596th point. Three hundred and seventy-four career assists.

The Finesse Game

The best playmaker on the club by a distance and the reason this franchise had anything at all through the Arizona years.

The shot chart is the odd part: 331 unblocked attempts from a median of 30 feet with only 28 per cent from inside twenty, and 23 goals. He shoots from range because at 175 pounds the slot is not always available, and the release is good enough to make it work.

Sixty-two assists is a top-ten figure in the league.

The Physical Game

Five foot ten and 175 pounds, and among the lightest forwards in this edition. Thirty-eight penalty minutes.

He does not go to the net front and cannot hold a wall. Everything is speed, edges and finding the seam a beat before the defence closes it.

Eighty-two games played is the remarkable part — he has been durable at a weight that ought not permit it.

The Intangibles

Fifty-six point one per cent of the expected goals, 92nd percentile, and 55.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 93rd, across 1,219 minutes, with the chances 57.3 to 44.9 in his favour.

The goals went 43-46 against him regardless, which is the goaltending.

Twenty points in his last ten — second only to Connor McDavid’s twenty-one. He is 28, the captain, and has played his entire career for a club that has moved cities and never won a playoff round.