Roman Josi

Last Season

Thirteen goals and 42 assists in 68 games — 55 points, minus-15, at 24:53 a night. Fourteen games missed. His 1,030th career game.

The Finesse Game

Still one of the great skating defencemen of his era. He carries the puck the length of the ice, he walks the line on the power play, and 42 assists in 68 games from the blue line is a first-pair rate at 36.

The shot is used properly: 250 unblocked attempts from a median of 45 feet, thirteen goals, and he gets it through traffic as well as anybody.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 201, and he defends with skating and stick rather than force. Thirty penalty minutes in 68 games of the heaviest minutes on the club.

The decline that is visible is in the defending rather than the offence — he cannot recover from a mistake the way he could five years ago, and he is being asked to play twenty-five minutes on a team with no cover.

The Intangibles

Forty-eight point eight per cent of the expected goals, 43rd percentile, and 50.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 64th, against the other team’s best every night.

Seven hundred and seventy-nine points, a Norris Trophy, and eighteen seasons in one uniform for a club that has won one playoff round in the last eight years.

Eight points in his last ten. He is 36 and the ice time has not come down. Whether Nashville should still be asking this of him is the question the whole roster is really about.