Jared Spurgeon

Last Season

Six goals and 22 points in 79 games, plus-two, on nineteen and a half minutes a night. He passed a thousand career games, all but a handful of them for this club.

The Finesse Game

The hockey sense is what has carried a small defenceman through a long career. He is never out of position, he reads a rush a beat before it develops, and he closes gaps at exactly the moment an attacker has committed. Very little of his defending involves contact because very little of it needs to.

He moves the puck cleanly and quickly, does not force plays through the middle, and still activates into the offensive zone when the read is there. The shot is a get-it-through shot rather than a weapon.

The skating remains good. It has to be; it is the mechanism that makes everything else work.

The Physical Game

Five-nine and 166 pounds, which is remarkable for a defenceman who has played this long against this competition. He cannot win a battle by strength and does not attempt one — he ties sticks up, boxes out, and gets the puck out. Heavy forwards can establish themselves in front of him.

He has had significant injuries. That is what happens to a player this size over a thousand games.

The Intangibles

The captain, and a player whose value has always been better understood inside the room than outside it. He has spent the last several seasons shepherding younger defencemen, and lost his most frequent partner to Calgary.

He is thirty-six. The reads will last; the body is the question, as it has been for five years now.