Dennis Hildeby

Last Season

Twenty appearances, 5-7-4, a 2.86 goals-against average and a .9124 save percentage with one shutout. His career figure across 26 games is .9034. His five-on-five work was done in Toronto.

The Physical Game

Six foot seven and 231 pounds — the largest goaltender in this edition, and among the largest ever to play in the league.

The size is the whole proposition: he takes up the net simply by standing in it, and on a shot from distance there is nowhere obvious to put the puck. The difficulty at that height is the same as it is for every goaltender this large — getting down and getting back up, and holding the post through traffic.

The lateral push is better than it has any right to be.

The Mental Game

Twenty appearances behind a Toronto club whose goaltending finished twenty-one goals worse than the chances it faced, and he stopped .9124 in them — better than either of the two men ahead of him.

The Intangibles

A .9124 in twenty games is a small sample and a genuinely encouraging one, and it is the best figure any Toronto goaltender posted last season.

He is 25, a fourth-round pick, and arrives as the backup to Andrei Vasilevskiy, which is either the best apprenticeship available or a year on the bench, depending on how many of the fifty-eight starts the club wants to keep giving a thirty-two-year-old.