Samuel Girard

Last Season

Three goals and 16 assists in 60 games — 19 points, plus-17, at 18:06 a night.

The Finesse Game

The skating is exceptional and it is the only reason a defenceman this size has 608 NHL games. He escapes pressure by turning through it, and the first pass out is quick and usually the right one.

The shot is nothing: 70 unblocked attempts from a median of 52 feet, three goals. Two hundred and forty-two points in 608 games, almost all of them assists.

The Physical Game

Five foot ten and 170 pounds — the lightest defenceman in this edition. Twenty-three penalty minutes. He cannot clear a crease, cannot win a net-front battle, and is moved wherever a heavy winger decides.

He avoids the problem with feet and anticipation, which is the only option available to him.

The Intangibles

Fifty-six point six per cent of the expected goals, 94th percentile, and 54.4 per cent of the shot attempts, 88th, with the goals 66 for and 21 against across 1,016 minutes.

That sixty-six to twenty-one is the most lopsided on-ice goal margin of any player in this book, and the chances underneath — 48.3 to 37.0 — support a good deal of it. The rest is a club that finished thirty-five goals above its expected total.

He is 28, a second-round pick, and one of the better skating defencemen in the league playing at a weight that should make it impossible.