Ilya Lyubushkin

Last Season

One goal and eight assists in 53 games — nine points, plus-one, at 15:44 a night with 40 penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in Dallas.

The Finesse Game

There is none. Forty-seven unblocked attempts from a median of 50 feet, four per cent from inside twenty, and one goal. Seven goals in 486 career games.

Eight assists in 53 games. He is on the ice to defend and does not touch the puck by choice.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 206, and undrafted — a career built entirely on being willing to hit and block. Forty penalty minutes, a genuine physical presence in front of his own net, and he blocks shots at a high rate.

The skating is poor and it is the ceiling on everything else.

The Intangibles

Forty-five point seven per cent of the expected goals, 16th percentile, and 42.8 per cent of the shot attempts, third percentile, across 764 minutes — on a club that finished fourth in the league in expected goals against.

That split is the Dallas method taken to its extreme: concede the puck entirely, concede little that is dangerous. It works there because Heiskanen and Lindell are covering the middle. It is not a transferable result.

He is 32, on his sixth organisation, and joins a defence that already has Skjei at the twenty-fifth percentile and Perbix at the eleventh. That is three of six now.