Nathan MacKinnon

Last Season

Fifty-three goals and 74 assists in 80 games for 127 points, plus-57 — the best mark in this edition — on 350 shots and twenty-two minutes a night. He played 80 percent of his five-on-five time with Necas, who scored a hundred points himself.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the most physically impressive thing in the league. It is not just speed; it is speed carrying weight, with a stride that lets him enter the zone at pace while still protecting the puck. Defencemen back off because the alternative is being beaten wide, and the moment they back off he has the blue line and a shooting lane.

The shot is heavy and he takes an enormous number of them — 350 is a volume almost nobody reaches, and 53 goals from it is a fine rate for someone shooting that often from that far out. He has added a genuinely dangerous one-timer to a game that used to be all rush.

The playmaking has grown every year. He is now as likely to slow down and find the late man as he is to shoot.

The Physical Game

Six feet and 200, and he is difficult to knock over. He does not hunt hits and he does not avoid contact; he absorbs it at speed and keeps going, which is a specific and rare physical gift.

Eighty games is normal for him. He is durable in a way that players with his style usually are not.

The Intangibles

The compete is genuinely conspicuous — he is visibly furious about shifts, not just games, and it has occasionally tipped into taking a shift by himself when the simple play was there.

He has a Cup, a Hart, and a decade of being the best player on the ice most nights without ever being the most discussed player in the sport. The plus-57 says the two-way game arrived some time ago and nobody updated the file.