Lukas Reichel

Last Season

Three goals and five assists in 29 games, minus-two, at 12:27 a night. His five-on-five minutes were played in Vancouver.

The Finesse Game

The skating is genuinely good — quick feet, a clean first three strides, and enough handling to carry the puck through the neutral zone. That is what made him the seventeenth pick in 2020.

Everything after the blue line has been the problem. Forty unblocked attempts in 29 games, three goals, and a median distance of 26 feet. He does not shoot and when he passes it is often the safe one. Sixty-two points in 198 career games.

The Physical Game

Six foot even and 170 pounds, which is among the lightest in the league, and there is no strength in his game to compensate. Six penalty minutes in 29 games. He is removed from pucks routinely and cannot hold the wall.

The Intangibles

The on-ice results were the worst of any player in this section: 44.5 per cent of the expected goals, 12th percentile, and 45.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 15th. The sample is only 336 minutes, so it is not a verdict on its own — but it is consistent with the two seasons before it.

He is 24, which is young enough that the story is not finished, and 198 games in with no sign of the scoring that the pick assumed. Boston is his third organisation. The feet will always be there. Something else has to arrive.