Connor Brown

Last Season

Eighteen goals and 25 assists in 75 games — 43 points, minus-one, at 17:33 a night with four power-play goals.

The Finesse Game

The location is the story. Forty-seven per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, median 21, and eighteen goals came from a hundred and sixteen shots on goal — a high conversion.

He is not a natural scorer; 125 goals in 676 career games says so. What he does is arrive at the net and take what is available, which at 32 has produced the best goal total of his career.

Twenty-five assists is honest middle-six work.

The Physical Game

Six foot even, 184, and light. Twenty-two penalty minutes. He forechecks properly and kills penalties, and the value has always been in the details rather than in any physical presence.

He came back from a serious knee injury that cost him most of a season and has not looked the same skater since, which is precisely why the shots come from twenty-one feet now.

The Intangibles

Forty-eight point four per cent of the expected goals, 39th percentile — the weakest of New Jersey’s regular forwards — with the goals 37-53 against.

Seven points in his last ten, four of them goals. He is 32, a hundred and fifty-sixth overall pick with 301 career points, and precisely the kind of player who gets more valuable as his shot chart tightens.