Robert Thomas

Last Season

Twenty-five goals and 39 assists in 64 games — 64 points, plus-22, at 19:01 a night with three power-play goals. Eighteen games missed. Four hundred and sixty points in 530 career games.

The Finesse Game

The best playmaker on the club and among the better ones in the league. He holds the puck a beat longer than is comfortable to watch and the pass arrives exactly when the lane opens.

The shooting is remarkably efficient: 137 unblocked attempts produced 23 goals, from a median of 22 feet with 45 per cent from inside twenty and only nine per cent from beyond forty. That is a seventeen per cent conversion and it is the second season running.

Three hundred and twenty-eight career assists against 132 goals says where the game lives.

The Physical Game

Six foot even, 207, and thicker than he looks. Twenty-four penalty minutes.

He protects the puck through contact below the goal line, which is where most of the assists start, and he is not a checker and never has been.

The Intangibles

Fifty-three point one per cent of the expected goals, 78th percentile — the best mark on the club — and 50.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 65th, across 922 minutes, with the chances 41.0 to 36.2 in his favour.

The goals went 28-38 against him regardless, which is the goaltending: St. Louis conceded fourteen goals more than the chances it faced.

Sixteen points in his last ten, nine of them goals. He is 27, a twentieth overall pick, the captain, and a point-a-game centre nobody outside Missouri discusses.