Matthew Robertson

Last Season

Six goals and 12 assists in 72 games — 18 points, minus-one, at 17:24 a night with 38 penalty minutes. His first real NHL season, at 24, six years after being drafted.

The Finesse Game

Modest. A hundred and twenty-six unblocked attempts from a median of 56 feet, three per cent from inside twenty, six goals.

Six goals from that distance is a high conversion and will not repeat. Twelve assists in 72 games is the honest measure of what he does with the puck.

The Physical Game

Six foot four, 210, and he defends soundly. Thirty-eight penalty minutes. He clears the crease and closes gaps without over-committing, which is the whole of the third-pair job.

The Intangibles

Forty-eight point seven per cent of the expected goals, 42nd percentile, and 48.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 44th, across 1,131 minutes.

Below the line and, on this blue line, the third-best mark of the six — ahead of Schneider at the tenth percentile and well ahead of Pettersson arriving from the fifth.

Four points in his last ten. He is 25, a forty-ninth overall pick, and 74 career games in. Six years in the minors and then a full season at seventeen minutes is a career that almost did not happen, and this is roughly what it should look like.