Quinn Hughes

Last Season

Seven goals and 69 assists in 74 games, on 27:44 a night — the heaviest workload of any player on this roster and among the heaviest in the league. The minus-four is a number to read with care on a team that was outshot for long stretches.

The Finesse Game

The skating is the whole edifice. He is not merely fast; he is unpredictable, with edges that let him change direction in a stride and escape forecheckers who have him pinned. Defencemen who skate like this usually get into trouble; he almost never does, because he does not carry the puck into pressure, he carries it away from pressure.

The passing is elite in the literal sense. Sixty-nine assists from a defenceman is a season very few players have had, and it is not power-play inflation — he had two power-play goals and a great deal of his damage comes at even strength, breaking a forecheck with one pass and turning defence into offence before the other team has changed.

He walks the line, he retrieves under pressure without panicking, and he makes ordinary forwards look better.

The Physical Game

Five-ten and 180, which is small for a defenceman playing this many minutes, and there is no pretending otherwise. He cannot clear a crease against a heavy forward and he can be pinned along the wall by someone who gets there first. He defends with feet, stick and angles instead, and does it better than most bigger men.

The workload is the thing to watch. Twenty-eight minutes a night at this size, every night, is a lot of asking.

The Intangibles

A Norris winner who arrived here from Vancouver and immediately became the most important player on the ice most nights. He plays 50 percent of his five-on-five minutes with a twenty-three-year-old, which is either a partnership or an apprenticeship, and probably both.

There is no meaningful criticism of him as a hockey player. The only real question is what a club builds around a defenceman this good and this light.