Frederick Gaudreau

Last Season

Seven goals and 17 assists in 68 games — 24 points, minus-one, at 16:09 a night with eleven penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

Modest and sensibly placed. A hundred and nineteen unblocked attempts, eight goals, median 24 feet with 43 per cent from inside twenty.

A hundred and seventy-six points in 478 career games is a fourth-line rate, and seventeen assists in 68 games is the better half of it.

The Physical Game

Six foot even, 184, and light. Eleven penalty minutes across 68 games is remarkably low.

He wins faceoffs, kills penalties, and takes the defensive-zone start, which is the job and has been for nine seasons.

The Intangibles

Forty point five per cent of the expected goals, second percentile, and 41.2 per cent of the shot attempts, also second, across 921 minutes — with the chances 28.3 for and 41.5 against.

Those are the second-worst figures on a club that had the worst in the league, and the difference between him and Stephenson is that Gaudreau is a fourth-line centre being used as one.

The goals came out 40-34 in his favour regardless, which is entirely the goaltending.

Four points in his last ten. He is 33, undrafted, won a Cup in Tampa, and has made a nine-year career out of being the player a coach trusts with the shift nobody wants. The numbers say what that shift costs.