Nate Schmidt

Last Season

Five goals and 17 assists in all 82 games — 22 points, plus-31, at 19:42 a night with only 22 penalty minutes.

His 823rd career game.

The Finesse Game

A hundred and forty-three unblocked attempts from a median of 54 feet, 77 per cent from beyond forty, five goals. Fifty-seven goals in 823 career games.

Seventeen assists in a full season is thin, and 261 points in eleven seasons is the honest rate. The value is in the exit pass rather than in anything produced at the other end.

The Physical Game

Six foot even, 197, and he does not defend by force. Twenty-two penalty minutes across a full season is very low.

The skating is the tool and it is still good at 35 — he retrieves under pressure and gets out cleanly, which is the whole job.

The Intangibles

Fifty-three point nine per cent of the expected goals, 82nd percentile, and 54.5 per cent of the shot attempts, 89th, across 1,390 minutes, with the chances 61.1 to 52.3 in his favour.

The goals came out 53 for and 64 against — eleven the wrong way, underneath a plus-31, which tells you where the plus-31 came from.

Three points in his last ten. He is 35, undrafted out of Minnesota, won a Stanley Cup in Florida, and is on his fifth organisation. Twenty-two points looks like a fading depth defenceman; the chance share says otherwise.