Connor McMichael

Last Season

Fourteen goals and 32 assists in 78 games — 46 points, plus-eight, at 16:54 a night. His five-on-five work was done in Washington.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is excellent. A hundred and ninety-eight unblocked attempts with 52 per cent from inside twenty feet and a median of nineteen, and only fourteen per cent from beyond forty.

Fourteen goals from that ice is a poor conversion and the reason is weight rather than placement — he gets to the right spots and does not get clean looks from them.

Thirty-two assists is the real number and the best rate of his career. A hundred and fifty-four points in 315 career games.

The Physical Game

Six foot even and 180 pounds, and light. Thirty penalty minutes.

The skating is genuinely quick and it is how he survives in the interior at that weight. He does not win a wall battle and does not try to.

The Intangibles

Forty-seven point three per cent of the expected goals, 29th percentile, and 47.2 per cent of the shot attempts, 27th, across 1,020 minutes in Washington — with the goals 50 for and 32 against.

That eighteen-goal margin has almost nothing to do with him: Washington’s goaltending came in twenty-nine goals better than the chances it faced, the best in the league. The chances underneath were 41.3 to 46.1 against.

He is 25, a twenty-fifth overall pick, and joins a top six that already has Thomas, Buchnevich, Holloway and Snuggerud. That is a good problem and a real one.