Philip Broberg

Last Season

Six goals and 28 assists in 81 games — 34 points, plus-14, at 23:21 a night with only sixteen penalty minutes.

The Finesse Game

The skating is exceptional for a man this size — he escapes forechecks by turning through them and carries the puck out of his own zone as well as any defenceman on the roster.

A hundred and fifty-eight unblocked attempts from a median of 42 feet, six goals. Twenty-eight assists in 81 games is a fair rate for a first-pair defenceman whose job is the exit rather than the finish.

Seventy-six points in 230 career games.

The Physical Game

Six foot four, 210, and he defends with reach and feet rather than by punishing people. Sixteen penalty minutes across a full season of twenty-three-minute nights is exceptionally disciplined.

He is not physically dominant for the size and that has followed him since Edmonton drafted him eighth overall.

The Intangibles

Fifty-one point one per cent of the expected goals, 64th percentile, against only 46.3 per cent of the shot attempts, 20th percentile, across 1,524 minutes — the heaviest workload on the club.

That five-point gap is the St. Louis pattern in one line: the club was outshot all season and out-chanced nobody, finishing 48.2 per cent in attempts and 50.2 in expected goals. They give up the outside and defend the middle.

Nine points in his last ten. He is 25, and the offer sheet St. Louis used to take him and Holloway out of Edmonton two summers ago now looks like the best thing this front office has done in a decade.