Filip Hronek

Last Season

Eight goals and 41 assists in all 82 games — 49 points, minus-23, at 25:00 a night, and 1,617 minutes at five-on-five — the fifth-heaviest workload of any defenceman in the league — with four power-play goals.

His 533rd career game and his 287th point.

The Finesse Game

A genuine puck-mover. A hundred and ninety-eight unblocked attempts from a median of 51 feet, 75 per cent from beyond forty, eight goals.

Forty-one assists is a top-fifteen figure among defencemen and it was produced on a club that scored the fewest goals in the league at five-on-five. That is the single most impressive line in Vancouver’s section.

The Physical Game

Six foot even and 190 pounds, and light for twenty-five minutes a night. Thirty-three penalty minutes.

He cannot clear a crease and loses net-front battles as a matter of physics. The skating covers a great deal and at this workload it cannot cover all of it.

The Intangibles

Forty-four per cent of the expected goals, tenth percentile, against 49.1 per cent of the shot attempts, 47th, across 1,617 minutes — with the chances 61.8 for and 78.4 against and the goals 41 for and 83 against.

A forty-two goal margin against is the worst on-ice figure in this book by a wide margin, and the five-point gap between his attempt share and his chance share says the shots he conceded were the dangerous kind.

Eight points in his last ten, none of them goals. He is 28, and he is being asked to play a number-one defenceman’s minutes on the worst defensive club in the league. Nobody comes out of that with a good number.