John Carlson

Last Season

Fourteen goals and 46 assists in 71 games — 60 points, plus-nine, at 23:10 a night. His five-on-five work was done in Washington.

His 1,159th career game and his 785th point. Six hundred and fifteen career assists.

The Finesse Game

The shot from the point is still one of the heaviest in the league and it is still the reason he runs a power play. Two hundred and thirty-seven unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet, 62 per cent from beyond forty, and fourteen goals — an excellent conversion for a defenceman.

Forty-six assists at 36 is a top-five figure among defencemen and the eleventh season he has cleared forty.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 220, and he has never defended by force. Thirty-two penalty minutes.

The skating has slowed and the gap control was never the strength. He defends by having the puck, and at twenty-three minutes a night that is a bet the club has to keep making.

The Intangibles

Fifty-three point nine per cent of the expected goals, 82nd percentile, and 54.6 per cent of the shot attempts, 89th, across 1,220 minutes in Washington.

Those are genuinely strong figures, and they came on a club whose goaltending finished twenty-nine goals better than the chances it faced — the best in the league — so the plus-nine understates rather than flatters him.

He is 36, a Stanley Cup and a Norris into an eighteen-year career, all of it in Washington until now. Tampa is replacing Raddysh and half a blue line with a man who scored sixty points; that is not a rebuild move.