Matvei Michkov

Last Season

Twenty goals and 31 assists in 81 games — 51 points, even in plus-minus, at 14:50 a night with 71 penalty minutes. His second NHL season, at 21.

The Finesse Game

The hands are the best on the roster and among the more inventive in the league. He does things with the puck in tight that look improvised and are not — the same moves recur, which is how you know they are practised.

The shooting is well placed: 242 unblocked attempts with 42 per cent from inside twenty feet, median 23, and 23 goals. He goes to the middle rather than settling for the wall.

Thirty-one assists in fourteen and a half minutes a night is a first-line rate compressed into third-line ice.

The Physical Game

Five foot ten and 172 pounds, one of the lightest forwards in the league — and 71 penalty minutes, which is the most on the club among forwards.

That combination is the whole personality. He gives away forty pounds and does not adjust for it, which is admirable and is also why he spends time in the box and on the training table.

The Intangibles

Fifty-one point nine per cent of the expected goals, 70th percentile, on a club that finished 26th at generating even-strength offence and third at preventing it.

Thirteen points in his last ten. He is 21, the seventh pick in 2023, and 114 points into 161 games while being deployed carefully.

Whether a hundred and seventy-two pound winger survives a checking series is the standing question, and he plays as though he has never heard it asked.