Sean Walker

Last Season

Nine goals and 22 assists in 81 games — 31 points, plus-six, at 21:49 a night with 1,489 five-on-five minutes, the most on the club.

The Finesse Game

Modest and useful. Two hundred and fifty-three unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet with four per cent inside twenty, and nine goals — the shot is a means of generating rebounds and he is good at getting it through.

Twenty-two assists from a defensive defenceman playing top-pair minutes is a fair return.

The Physical Game

Five foot eleven and 191, which is small for the minutes he plays, and he compensates with positioning and a willingness to take the puck out of dangerous ice rather than fight for it. Fifty-nine penalty minutes.

The Intangibles

He was on for 61.1 per cent of the shot attempts, 99th percentile, and 56.1 per cent of the expected goals, 92nd, across more minutes than anyone else here.

And a number that shows how badly this club was let down: while he was on the ice the expected goals went 73.4 to 57.5 in his favour, and the actual goals went 51-59 against. That is a swing of twenty-four goals in the wrong direction, in one season, for one player. Nothing about it is his doing.

He is 31, undrafted, 476 games in. On any other roster this season reads as a career year. Here it reads as somebody who deserved considerably better from the man behind him.