Jake Sanderson

Last Season

Fourteen goals and 40 assists in 67 games — 54 points, plus-16, at 24:50 a night, the heaviest workload on the club. Fifteen games missed.

The Finesse Game

The skating is exceptional and it is the reason a defenceman plays twenty-five minutes at 23. He carries the puck out under pressure, joins as a fourth attacker, and gets back before the play turns.

Fourteen goals from the blue line is a top-five figure at the position: 238 unblocked attempts, median 48 feet, and he gets them through.

Forty assists in 67 games is a first-pair rate.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 202, and he defends with skating and stick. Eight penalty minutes in 67 games of the hardest minutes on a first-place defensive team, which is one of the most impressive discipline numbers in this book.

He is never beaten badly enough to have to foul.

The Intangibles

Fifty-six point one per cent of the expected goals, 92nd percentile, and 55.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 92nd, with the chances 49.8 to 39.0 in his favour.

The goals went 58-47, which on this club is a good outcome — Ottawa’s goaltending cost thirty-three.

Eight points in his last ten. He is 23, the fifth pick in 2020, and already one of the ten best defencemen in the league by the underlying numbers. Nobody outside Ontario talks about him.