Jordan Staal

Last Season

Twenty goals and 16 assists in 75 games — 36 points, plus-five, at 16:11 a night. His twentieth NHL season and his 1,403rd game. Eight points in his last ten, four of them goals.

The Finesse Game

Twenty goals at 37 years old, and the shot chart explains it: 51 per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, median 18, with only eleven per cent from beyond forty.

He has no speed left and it does not matter, because he stopped needing it a decade ago. He arrives at the net late, he is six foot four in a crowd, and he puts it in.

Sixteen assists is what the playmaking is now.

The Physical Game

Six foot four, 220, and the body still works. Twenty-nine penalty minutes. He wins faceoffs, he protects pucks on the wall, and he plays the hardest defensive minutes on a club that leads the league in penalty killing.

The Intangibles

Fifty-two point six per cent of the expected goals, 75th percentile — the lowest of any Carolina regular forward, which is exactly what you would expect from the man taking every defensive-zone draw against every top line.

Twenty seasons, the second overall pick in 2006, a Stanley Cup as a teenager, and a career spent doing the work that does not appear in a highlight package. He is 38 in September.

There is no decline visible in the results. When it comes it will come quickly, and the club has no obvious replacement for what he does.