K'Andre Miller

Last Season

Eight goals and 29 assists in 72 games — 37 points, plus-seven, at 22:24 a night, the heaviest workload on the club.

The Finesse Game

The skating is exceptional for a man this size — genuinely one of the better skating defencemen in the league. He carries the puck out of trouble rather than passing it out, and at six foot five with that stride he is very difficult to angle off.

The shot is a point shot and used as one: 195 unblocked attempts, median 52 feet, 75 per cent from beyond forty, eight goals. Twenty-nine assists is the real offensive contribution.

The Physical Game

Six foot five, 210, with reach that ends plays before they develop and a willingness to use his body that has grown each season. Fifty-six penalty minutes.

He can be beaten by a quick forward changing direction in tight, which is the ordinary cost of being long.

The Intangibles

He was on the ice for 62.1 per cent of the shot attempts, which is the highest figure of any player covered in this edition, and 57.4 per cent of the expected goals, 97th percentile, across 1,368 minutes.

That deserves the caveat that every Carolina number deserves: this club was at 59.8 per cent as a team, the best in the league by a distance, and the system is doing a great deal of the work. Miller was still the best of them, in the most minutes, against the best opposition.

He is 26, a first-round pick who arrived from New York and immediately became the most important defenceman here while Slavin was hurt. The goals went 47-48 while the expected goals went 67.7 to 50.1 — an eighteen-goal shortfall that belongs entirely to the men behind and in front of him.