Jake Middleton

Last Season

Two goals and 14 assists in 75 games, plus-two, at 17:30 a night with 76 penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in Minnesota.

The Finesse Game

Ninety-five unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet, two goals, seven per cent from inside twenty. Twenty-four goals in 381 career games.

The first pass is adequate and occasionally rushed. He is not a puck-mover and the club will not use him as one.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 219, and this is the whole of it. Seventy-six penalty minutes, a genuine appetite for contact, and a willingness to fight that is now rare among top-four defencemen.

The Intangibles

An interesting split. He was on for 46.3 per cent of the shot attempts — 20th percentile — but 49.5 per cent of the expected goals, 48th. The opposition had the puck a great deal and struggled to do much with it, which is the signature of a defenceman conceding the outside deliberately.

The goals went 48-46 across 1,145 minutes, essentially level, on a club that was considerably better than this one.

He is 30, a seventh-round pick in 2014 who has made 381 games out of nothing, and he joins a defence that needs somebody willing to be unpleasant. The possession numbers will look worse here. That will not all be his fault.