Filip Forsberg

Last Season

Forty goals and 35 assists in all 82 games — 75 points, minus-two, at 18:53 a night with 11 power-play goals. Two hundred and forty-six shots on goal.

The Finesse Game

The release is the whole thing and it is one of the best in the league. Three hundred and ninety unblocked attempts produced 40 goals from a median distance of 35 feet, with 30 per cent coming from beyond forty and only a quarter from inside twenty.

That is the shot chart of a man who does not need a good look. Almost every other forty-goal scorer in this book works from inside twenty-five feet; Forsberg beats goaltenders clean from the top of the circle, and has for a decade.

Thirty-five assists says the passing has never been the weak half.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 205, and he plays a heavier game than the finesse suggests — he protects pucks below the goal line and takes the punishment on the power play. Thirty-four penalty minutes.

The Intangibles

Forty-seven point two per cent of the expected goals, 28th percentile, on a club that was 47.8 as a team and finished 27th in even-strength expected goals against.

The goals went 49-61 against him. That is the roster, not the man: Nashville’s goaltending came in eight goals worse than the chances faced and its defence conceded the sixth-most in the league.

Ten points in his last ten, seven of them goals. He is 32, 756 points into 862 games, and has now scored forty in a season three times. The shot is not going anywhere.