Ryan O'Reilly

Last Season

Twenty-five goals and 49 assists in 81 games — 74 points, plus-eight on a club that was minus-20, at 20:24 a night. His 1,233rd career game.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is the most extreme of any regular forward in this edition. Sixty-four per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, with a median of thirteen and only eight per cent from beyond forty.

Nobody covered here shoots from closer. He is 35, he has no speed, and he scored 25 goals by standing in the paint and being impossible to move off it.

Forty-nine assists is the larger half. He is still one of the best puck-protection centres in the league below the goal line, and the pass out of the corner is the reason Evangelista had 44 assists of his own.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 207, and he wins pucks with body position and a stick that is always in the right place. Twenty-two penalty minutes in 81 games of the hardest defensive assignment on the roster.

He takes every important faceoff and wins most of them.

The Intangibles

Forty-eight point three per cent of the expected goals, 38th percentile, on a club at 47.8. Plus-eight on a team that finished minus-20 — the best figure on the roster by a distance, in the hardest minutes.

A Conn Smythe, a Selke, a Stanley Cup, 898 points, and a career built entirely on doing the difficult half of the game well enough to be given the easy half as a reward.

Eight points in his last ten. He is 35 and still the most useful player on this team.