Jonas Brodin

Last Season

Four goals and 18 points in 62 games with a plus-19 that led the team, on twenty minutes a night. He missed twenty games, which is now the pattern.

The Finesse Game

Almost none of it is offensive, and that is the design. Sixty-two goals in 915 career games. What he does instead is defend the rush better than nearly anyone: his skating is genuinely excellent — smooth, effortless, fast backwards — and he uses a long stick to take the puck off attackers at the blue line without ever having to commit his body.

The first pass is clean and simple. He does not hold the puck, does not force it, and does not put teammates in trouble.

Watch him for a period and it seems like nothing is happening. Watch the players he defends and their night disappears.

The Physical Game

Six-two and 196, and he is not a physical defenceman in the punishing sense. He defends with position and stick, blocks a great many shots, and pays for it — the injuries that cost him twenty games a season are of the accumulating kind rather than the freak kind.

The Intangibles

He has been doing this at a high level for over a decade without ever being widely discussed, which is the fate of defencemen whose value does not appear on a scoresheet.

The availability is the whole risk. When he plays, this defence has a spine. He is thirty-three and has not played a full season in some time.