Dylan Larkin

Last Season

Thirty-four goals and 33 assists in 74 games — 67 points, plus-three, at 20:11 a night with 14 power-play goals. Two hundred and twenty-nine shots on goal.

The Finesse Game

Still one of the faster centres in the league at 30, and the speed is what makes the shot work — he arrives at the top of the circle a half-step before the defenceman can close, and the release is quick enough to punish that.

Three hundred and forty-six unblocked attempts, 33 goals, 42 per cent from inside twenty feet, median 23. He goes to the ice where goals are, which is why the goal total has climbed as the rest of his game has stayed flat.

Thirty-three assists is what the playmaking gives you and it has never been more.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 204, and he plays harder than his frame suggests. Forty-eight penalty minutes. He takes faceoffs, kills penalties on the seventh-ranked unit in the league, and does not avoid the hard ice.

The Intangibles

Forty-nine point two per cent of the expected goals, 46th percentile, in a thousand minutes of the hardest assignment on the club.

Eleven points in his last ten, five of them goals. He is 30, the captain, and 643 points into a career spent entirely in Detroit through the worst stretch in the franchise’s modern history.

Two hundred and seventy-six goals and no playoff games. That is the whole of it, and this is the roster that has to change it.