Radko Gudas

Last Season

Two goals and 11 assists in 56 games — 13 points, minus-two, at 16:11 a night with 67 penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in Anaheim.

The Finesse Game

None whatsoever. Ninety-six unblocked attempts from a median of 60 feet — the longest average distance in this edition — with three per cent from inside twenty, and two goals.

Forty-two goals in 885 career games. He is on the ice to hurt people and to clear the front of the net, and the club is not confused about it.

The Physical Game

Six foot even, 208, and one of the genuinely feared hitters of the last fifteen years. Sixty-seven penalty minutes in 56 games, a long history of suspensions, and a style that has not softened with age.

The skating is the limitation and has been for years.

The Intangibles

Forty-nine point eight per cent of the expected goals, 51st percentile, in 810 minutes on a club that finished twenty-ninth in expected goals against. That is a respectable number in poor circumstances.

He is 36 and returns to the organisation he won a Stanley Cup with, to a blue line that has Forsling, Ekblad, Jones and Mikkola ahead of him.

Florida is built for a heavy spring and he is a heavy spring player. Whether a sixth defenceman who cannot skate still helps in April is the same question this book keeps asking about Deslauriers and Burroughs, and the answer keeps being: only in the games where it is the only thing that matters.