John Marino

Last Season

Four goals and 32 assists in 80 games — 36 points, plus-42, at 20:12 a night with only sixteen penalty minutes.

His 443rd career game.

The Finesse Game

Ninety-two unblocked attempts from a median of 52 feet, four goals. Twenty-three goals in 443 career games.

Thirty-two assists is a genuinely good return and it comes almost entirely from the first pass rather than from anything created in the offensive zone.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 200, and he defends by being early — the gap control and the stick are the best parts of the game, and he does not need to finish checks to end plays.

Sixteen penalty minutes across 80 games is among the lowest rates of any defenceman playing twenty minutes a night.

The Intangibles

Fifty-two point eight per cent of the expected goals, 76th percentile, and 53.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 84th, across 1,441 minutes, with the chances 60.8 to 54.3 in his favour.

The plus-42 is the fifth-highest figure in this book, and the goals underneath were 66-72 — against him.

That is worth sitting with: a plus-42 built on special teams and on a goal margin that was actually negative at five-on-five. It is the clearest example in this edition of why plus-minus should not be read on its own.

Six points in his last ten. He is 29, a hundred and fifty-fourth overall pick out of Harvard, and one of the most underrated defensive defencemen in the league.