Dougie Hamilton

Last Season

Twelve goals and 27 assists in 77 games — 39 points, minus-two, at 21:32 a night with 50 penalty minutes. Two hundred and three shots on goal.

The Finesse Game

The shot is the best of any defenceman in this book. Two hundred and ninety-three unblocked attempts from a median of 47 feet, twelve goals, and a hundred and sixty-three career goals from the blue line.

He gets it through traffic and he gets it on net, which is why a point shot from that distance keeps producing. Twenty-seven assists is the lower half of him now.

The Physical Game

Six foot six, 230, and he defends with reach rather than aggression. Fifty penalty minutes.

The defending has always been the criticism and it is fair: he can be beaten by a quick forward in tight, and at 33 he does not recover the way he did.

The Intangibles

Fifty-one point eight per cent of the expected goals, 70th percentile, and 54 per cent of the shot attempts, 86th — with the chances 60.6 to 56.5 in his favour and the actual goals 45 for and 67 against.

That is a twenty-two goal hole in the heaviest defensive minutes on a club that under-finished by thirty-two and whose goaltending came in fourteen worse than the chances predicted.

Seven points in his last ten. He is 33 and this was, by the numbers underneath, a perfectly good season that the scoreboard destroyed.