Gabe Perreault

Last Season

Twelve goals and 15 assists in 49 games — 27 points, even in plus-minus, at 15:59 a night with three power-play goals. His first NHL season, at 20.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is the best of any Ranger forward. Sixty-one per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, median 16, with only eight per cent from beyond forty.

Twelve goals from 105 attempts is a strong conversion and it comes from ice a rookie usually cannot get to.

The passing is the reason he was a first-round pick — fifteen assists in 49 games — and it is the half that will grow.

The Physical Game

Five foot eleven and 180 pounds, and light. Ten penalty minutes in 49 games. He is moved off pucks by grown defencemen and cannot yet hold the ice his shot chart wants.

That is the ordinary condition at twenty and the ordinary remedy is two summers.

The Intangibles

Forty-seven point one per cent of the expected goals, 27th percentile, in 712 minutes — below the line on a club that was 48 per cent as a team.

Seven points in his last ten, five of them goals. He is 21, the twenty-third pick in 2023, and on a roster that finished 29th at generating even-strength offence he is the one forward whose shot chart says he knows where to stand.