Declan Chisholm

Last Season

One goal and six assists in 26 games — seven points, plus-three, at 13:44 a night with four penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in Washington. Fifty-six games missed.

The Finesse Game

Twenty-nine unblocked attempts from a median of 54 feet, 83 per cent of them from beyond forty and not one from inside twenty. One goal.

That is a defenceman who shoots when the point is open and does nothing else with the puck in the offensive zone. Twenty-eight points in 125 career games is a fair third-pair rate; six assists in 26 games is the honest version of it.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 205, and average in every direction. Four penalty minutes in 26 games.

The skating is the best thing about him — he retrieves and exits cleanly and does not get hemmed in. He does not clear a crease and is not asked to.

The Intangibles

Forty-six point two per cent of the expected goals, 20th percentile, and 48.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 41st, across 345 minutes in Washington, with the goals 21-13 in his favour.

The goals ran well ahead of the chances, and Washington’s goaltending came in twenty-nine goals better than the chances it faced, the best in the league. That plus-three belongs to Washington’s goaltenders rather more than it belongs to him.

He is 26, a hundred and fiftieth overall pick, and a seventh defenceman who can play a sheltered fifteen minutes. On a New Jersey blue line that lost most of a season to injury, that is a real job.