Jackson LaCombe

Last Season

Ten goals and 48 assists in all 82 games, 24:15 a night — the heaviest workload on the club by two minutes. One thousand four hundred and ninety-seven minutes at five-on-five, also the most.

The Finesse Game

He skates the puck out of trouble rather than passing it out, and he is good enough at it that the club has built its breakout around him. The edges are the best part: he can take a forechecker’s angle away by changing his own, which is how a defenceman survives 24 minutes a night without a physical game to fall back on.

The 48 assists are not power-play inflation — he had three power-play goals and the bulk of his work is at even strength, where he ran the first pair. The shot is a means of creating rebounds rather than goals: 57 per cent of his attempts came from beyond 40 feet and ten went in.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 208, and he defends with position and stick rather than contact. Nineteen penalty minutes in a full season of top-pair minutes tells you how he plays it — clean, and rarely in a position where he has to grab.

Against heavy forechecks he can be worn down over a series. That is the part of his game that has not been tested in a meaningful spring.

The Intangibles

A second-round pick who has become a legitimate number one, and the underlying numbers back it: 53.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 86th percentile among all skaters, while facing the other team’s best.

The goals went 66-64 in his favour on a club that was outscored badly overall. That is doing your job while the building burns behind you.