Darren Raddysh

Last Season

Twenty-two goals and 48 assists in 73 games — 70 points, plus-21, at 22:42 a night with ten power-play goals and 72 penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in Tampa.

A hundred and forty-three points in 249 career games.

The Finesse Game

Twenty-two goals from a blue line, and the shot chart says how. Three hundred and fifteen unblocked attempts from a median of 51 feet, 74 per cent of them from beyond forty and only five per cent from inside twenty — and twenty-two went in.

That is a seven per cent conversion on point shots, which is an extraordinary figure and the reason ten of them came on a power play he quarterbacked.

Forty-eight assists is a top-five figure among defencemen.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 202, and average. Seventy-two penalty minutes is a moderately high rate.

He is not a punishing defender and does not clear a crease. The skating is good and the whole game is built on having the puck rather than taking it back.

The Intangibles

Fifty-seven per cent of the expected goals, 96th percentile, and 57.2 per cent of the shot attempts, 95th, across 1,259 minutes in Tampa — with the chances 63.2 to 47.7 in his favour and the goals 58-43.

Those are among the very best defensive figures in this book, and every one of them was produced inside the structure of the third-best possession club in the league.

He is 30, undrafted, and moves to a team where no skater cleared 48.9 per cent in chance share. This is the single most important transfer of the season to watch: if seventy points and a 96th percentile travel to Toronto, they were his. If they do not, they were Tampa’s.