Mark Scheifele

Last Season

Thirty-six goals and 67 assists in all 82 games for 103 points, seven on the power play, on twenty-one and a half minutes a night. He spent 90 percent of his five-on-five ice time with Kyle Connor, which is the tightest forward partnership in this edition.

The Finesse Game

The release is the thing people underrate. He shoots quickly off the catch from the top of the circle and scores a lot of goals that look routine because he has already found the space before the puck arrives. Thirty-six goals on 175 shots is a conversion rate very few centres sustain.

The playmaking is the larger part now. He holds the puck below the goal line, waits for a defenceman to commit, and slides it back to the winger who has quietly moved to the far post. Sixty-seven assists on a line that has been together for years is partly familiarity and mostly him.

The skating is good rather than quick, and it has never been the point.

The Physical Game

Six-three and 207, and he is not a physical centre. He avoids the interior, does not forecheck hard, and can be moved off pucks by a strong defenceman. He has been durable — three straight full seasons is real value.

The Intangibles

The criticism has followed him for a decade: defensively casual, quiet in playoff series, not a true first-line centre. Some of it has been fair and less of it is now. He was even on the plus-minus playing the hardest matchups on a team that was outshot.

He is thirty-three with a hundred points and a winger he has played with for most of a decade. What happens when that partnership is broken up is the interesting question, and neither of them has had to answer it.