Conor Timmins

Last Season

No goals and eight assists in 39 games, minus-eight, at 18:46 a night. Six goals in 198 career games.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is almost a curiosity. Seventy unblocked attempts, none of which went in, from a median distance of 58 feet — the longest of any player in this edition — with 87 per cent coming from beyond forty and exactly one per cent from inside twenty.

He is standing at the blue line putting pucks toward the net and nothing else. The passing is the better part; 48 assists in 198 games is a fair rate for a third-pair defenceman who moves it quickly.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 213, and he does not use it. Eighteen penalty minutes in 39 games, and in front of his own net he gets outworked by wingers he outweighs.

Concussions cost him most of two seasons early on, and it is fair to wonder how much of the reluctance dates from that.

The Intangibles

The results were bad. Forty-six and a half per cent of the expected goals, 25th percentile; 44.4 per cent of the shot attempts, ninth percentile. The goals went 20-30 against in 602 minutes.

He is 27, a second-round pick, on his fourth organisation, and he keeps getting eighteen minutes a night from somebody. The passing explains why. The rest of the page explains why it keeps being somebody new.