Jake Guentzel

Last Season

Thirty-eight goals and 50 assists in 81 games — 88 points, plus-13, at 20:15 a night with eight power-play goals and 61 penalty minutes.

His 681st career game and his 659th point. Three hundred and six career goals.

The Finesse Game

The most efficient shot chart of any high-volume scorer in this edition. Three hundred and seventeen unblocked attempts with 59 per cent of them from inside twenty feet, a median of sixteen, and only eleven per cent from beyond forty — and thirty-six goals.

That is nearly four hundred attempts a season taken almost entirely from the slot, by a five-foot-eleven, 176-pound winger. It is the single most impressive location profile in this book.

Fifty assists says the rest of it.

The Physical Game

Five foot eleven and 176 pounds, and he does his work in the most dangerous ice on the rink at that weight. Sixty-one penalty minutes.

He is not strong and does not win battles by force. He gets to the crease by timing the play and accepts what happens when he arrives, which is why the penalty minutes are high and the games missed are not.

The Intangibles

Fifty-three point six per cent of the expected goals, 81st percentile, and 53 per cent of the shot attempts, 82nd, across 1,146 minutes, with the goals level at 52-52.

Twelve points in his last ten, five of them goals.

He is 31, a third-round pick, and spent seven years being Sidney Crosby’s winger while people argued about how much of it was Crosby. Eighty-eight points on a different club in a different conference settles that.