Matt Duchene

Last Season

Sixteen goals and 29 assists in 57 games — 45 points, minus-three, at 16:31 a night with eight penalty minutes. His 1,195th career game and his 936th point.

The Finesse Game

The hands and the head are undiminished and the legs have gone, which is the standard shape of a thirty-five-year-old forward and he has adapted better than most.

Fifty-four per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, median 18, with six per cent from beyond forty — the tightest distribution of any Dallas forward. Seventeen goals from 136 attempts.

He was a burner in Colorado who scored off the rush. He is now a slot player who scores off other people’s work, and the conversion rate says the transition is complete.

The Physical Game

Five foot eleven, 211, and eight penalty minutes in 57 games. There is no physical component and there never was; he has built a 1,195-game career entirely on skill and reading.

The Intangibles

The five-on-five results were poor — 46.9 per cent of the expected goals, 26th percentile, and 44.8 per cent of the attempts, 11th — in 760 minutes on a club whose third line was outshot by design.

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

He is 35, the third pick in 2009, and 936 points into a career that will end just short of the round numbers that get a man remembered. On a Dallas team stacked at centre he is the third one, which is a luxury and a waste at the same time.