Mark Stone

Last Season

Twenty-eight goals and 45 assists in 60 games — 73 points, plus-26, at 19:13 a night with nine power-play goals and only nine penalty minutes. Twenty-two games missed.

His 766th career game and his 707th point.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is one of the best in the league. A hundred and ninety-six unblocked attempts with 63 per cent from inside twenty feet and a median of thirteen — level with Tkachuk and Bertuzzi for the closest work of any forward with fifty attempts — and 28 goals out of it.

Twenty-eight goals in sixty games at 34 is a career-best rate, and it comes entirely from where he shoots.

Forty-five assists is the other half and the stick-checking that produces the turnovers is a third.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 210, and he is not fast and never was. Nine penalty minutes across 60 games is one of the lowest rates in this edition.

The back has cost him large parts of four seasons and twenty-two games missed is now the expectation rather than the exception.

The Intangibles

Fifty-seven point three per cent of the expected goals, 96th percentile — the best figure on the club — and 53.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 86th, across 843 minutes, with the chances 36.8 to 27.4 in his favour.

Eleven points in his last ten, seven of them goals.

He is 34, a hundred and seventy-eighth overall pick, the captain, and a Conn Smythe winner. When he plays, this club is the best in the league; the record over four seasons is that he plays about seventy per cent of the time.