Mathew Barzal

Last Season

Nineteen goals and 53 assists in 81 games — 72 points, plus-10, at 20:39 a night with 61 penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the second-best in this book behind Jack Hughes and it is the whole engine. He carries the puck through the neutral zone at a speed that forces defencemen to turn, and the passing arrives out of that.

Fifty-three assists is a genuine first-line playmaker’s number. The shooting is the persistent criticism: 284 unblocked attempts from a median of 27 feet with 34 per cent inside twenty, and nineteen goals.

He has been told to shoot more for eight seasons and has never really done it.

The Physical Game

Six foot one and 186, and light. Sixty-one penalty minutes is higher than his game suggests and mostly comes from frustration and stick fouls on the backcheck.

He does not go to the net front and does not win wall battles.

The Intangibles

Fifty-one per cent of the expected goals, 62nd percentile, with the chances 58.9 to 56.6 in his favour and the goals 36-31.

New York under-finished by twenty goals. Fifty-three assists on a club that could not convert is a harder season than the total suggests.

Seven points in his last ten, one of them a goal. He is 29, 534 points into 611 games, and still the most watchable player on the roster.