Matthew Knies

Last Season

Twenty-three goals and 43 assists in 79 games — 66 points, minus-30, at 18:48 a night with six power-play goals.

A hundred and sixty points in 240 career games.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is the best on the club and one of the better ones in the league. Sixty-two per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet with a median of thirteen, and only nine per cent from beyond forty.

Twenty-one goals from 189 attempts. He scores from the crease because that is the only place he shoots from, and at 232 pounds it is a place he can hold.

Forty-three assists is the surprise and the best evidence that there is more here than a net-front power forward.

The Physical Game

Six foot three and 232 pounds, and among the heaviest forwards in the league — he wins the wall, wins the front of the net, and forechecks with real violence.

Twenty-nine penalty minutes is low for the way he plays, which is a compliment.

The Intangibles

Forty-four point five per cent of the expected goals, 12th percentile, and 42.4 per cent of the shot attempts, third percentile, across 1,115 minutes, with the chances 42.7 for and 53.3 against.

That attempt share is the worst of any Toronto regular and the minus-30 is the worst figure on the club.

Nine points in his last ten, five of them goals. He is 23, a fifty-seventh overall pick, and he scored sixty-six points while being on the ice for the most one-sided possession in a lineup that had nothing else. Which of those two things is him is the question this club has to answer before it pays him.