Justin Faulk

Last Season

Sixteen goals and 24 assists in 78 games — 40 points, minus-eight, at 22:01 a night. His five-on-five work was done in St. Louis.

The Finesse Game

The shot is the one thing that has not gone. Sixteen goals from a defenceman is a top-five figure at the position and it comes from a heavy, accurate release: 201 unblocked attempts from a median of 44 feet, and a remarkable share of them found their way through.

Twenty-four assists is ordinary. He is a shooter who plays defence rather than a puck-mover.

The Physical Game

Six foot even, 208, and he defends adequately without imposing. Forty-two penalty minutes.

The skating is the problem at 34 and it is the reason the underlying numbers read the way they do.

The Intangibles

Forty-four point eight per cent of the expected goals, 13th percentile, with the expected goals 49.1 to 60.4 against across 1,420 minutes and the actual goals 57-74.

That is a second consecutive season in that range. Six points in his last ten, four of them goals, which is the sort of run that keeps a reputation alive past the point the results support it.

He is 34, 1,058 games in, 498 points. Detroit finished third on the power play and he will help it. At twenty-two minutes a night at five-on-five he is the same problem Chiarot is, and the club now has two of them.