Nikita Kucherov

Last Season

Forty-four goals and 86 assists in 76 games — 130 points, plus-43, at 20:20 a night with eight power-play goals and 50 penalty minutes.

His 879th career game and his 1,124th point. Seven hundred and twenty-three career assists.

He turned 33 in June.

The Finesse Game

The best passer in the sport and it has not been close for several years. He holds the puck on the half-wall until the entire penalty kill has committed to the wrong man, and then it is in the net.

The shot chart is a curiosity: 376 unblocked attempts from a median of 34 feet, with only 24 per cent from inside twenty and 32 per cent from beyond forty, and forty-six goals came out of it.

Almost nobody scores forty-four goals from that far out. He is doing what Celebrini does in San Jose, ten years further into the craft — the release beats goaltenders before they are set, so the distance stops mattering.

The Physical Game

Six foot even and 173 pounds, and he has never been physical in any sense. Fifty penalty minutes, most of them frustration.

He avoids contact entirely and wins by being somewhere else. At 33 with 879 games played and no major injury history, that has turned out to be a strategy.

The Intangibles

Fifty-seven per cent of the expected goals, 96th percentile, and 55.8 per cent of the shot attempts, 92nd, across 1,136 minutes, with the chances 62.0 to 46.7 in his favour.

Ten points in his last ten, four of them goals. Two Stanley Cups, a Hart, and four hundred goals.

He is 33 and playing the best hockey of his life on a club that finished with the third-best possession numbers in the league. There is nothing to warn you about.