Sam Carrick

Last Season

Nine goals and seven assists in 73 games, plus-two, at 10:29 a night with 65 penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in New York.

The Finesse Game

Limited and deployed accordingly. Seventy-five shots produced nine goals from a median of 27 feet, with 42 per cent of his attempts inside twenty. Forty-three goals in 393 career games.

He wins faceoffs, which is most of why he dresses.

The Physical Game

Six foot even, 202, and he plays a hard, irritating fourth-line game. Sixty-five penalty minutes, willing to fight, and he finishes checks for the full shift.

The Intangibles

The five-on-five rate was poor: 46.5 per cent of the expected goals, 21st percentile, with the goals 21-30 against in 692 minutes — one of the few players in this book whose actual results were worse than his expected ones.

Set against that, six goals in his last ten games, which for a player with his career rate is a genuinely remarkable fortnight and exactly the sort of thing a printed annual could never tell you.

He is 34, a hundred and forty-fourth overall pick in 2010 who spent most of a decade in the minors before sticking. Ten seasons and 393 games out of that is a career worth having.