Martin Necas

Last Season

Thirty-eight goals and 62 assists in 78 games for 100 points, plus-47, on twenty-one and a half minutes a night. He played 80 percent of his five-on-five ice time with MacKinnon.

The Finesse Game

The speed is the foundation and it is genuine — he is among the quickest forwards in the league with the puck, and he uses it to enter the zone with control rather than to chase dump-ins.

The hands work at that speed, which is what makes him more than a track athlete. He beats defencemen wide, cuts back into the middle, and has developed a quick, accurate release that he gets away while moving. Thirty-eight goals on 206 shots is a very high conversion rate.

The playmaking has come along with it. He now looks off a defenceman and finds the trailer, which he did not do three years ago.

The Physical Game

Six-three and 195, and he plays light. He does not forecheck with force, does not win pucks along the wall, and avoids the interior in his own end.

The Intangibles

He spent years in another organisation being told he was inconsistent and not defensively trustworthy, was traded, and immediately produced a hundred points beside a superstar.

The honest question is how much of this travels. Eighty percent of his minutes came with the best player on the team, and the reasonable read is that he is a genuinely excellent complementary winger rather than a driver. That is not a criticism — it is what a hundred-point season is worth knowing about.