Jack Eichel

Last Season

Twenty-seven goals and 63 assists in 74 games — 90 points, plus-23, at 21:12 a night with only eighteen penalty minutes.

His 690th career game and his 698th point. Four hundred and thirty-two career assists.

The Finesse Game

The best skater among the league’s front-line centres and it is the foundation of everything — he enters the zone with speed and control at a size that should not permit it, and the defence has to give him something.

The shot chart is a curiosity: 349 unblocked attempts from a median of 32 feet with only 23 per cent from inside twenty, and 26 goals. He is scoring from range rather than from the slot, which for a six-foot-two centre is a choice rather than a limitation.

Sixty-three assists is a top-five figure in the league.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 208, and strong enough to carry through contact. Eighteen penalty minutes in 74 games is very low.

The neck surgery that ended his time in Buffalo is now five years past and has cost him nothing since.

The Intangibles

Fifty-six point one per cent of the expected goals, 92nd percentile, and 52.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 78th, across 1,131 minutes, with the chances 52.5 to 41.1 in his favour.

Sixteen points in his last ten. He is 29, a Stanley Cup, and the centre of a club that finished 53.4 per cent in expected goals and conceded twenty-two more actual goals than its chances warranted. Nothing that went wrong in Vegas last season happened while he had the puck.