Simon Nemec

Last Season

Eleven goals and 15 assists in 68 games — 26 points, minus-11, at 19:40 a night. His five-on-five work was done in New Jersey.

The Finesse Game

The skating and the first pass are legitimate. He retrieves under pressure without panicking and he can carry the puck out when the outlet is not there, which is the skill the second overall pick was taken for.

Eleven goals is a surprising number and worth reading carefully: 160 unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet with only nine per cent inside twenty. He is scoring from the point at a rate that will not repeat, the same trick Samuelsson pulled in Buffalo.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 190, and he defends with position rather than force. Twenty-six penalty minutes in 68 games of top-four work.

He is not soft, but he is not going to win a net-front battle against a heavy winger, and at his age that is still the part most likely to improve.

The Intangibles

The results were unremarkable rather than bad: 49 per cent of the expected goals, 44th percentile, and 49.7 per cent of the shot attempts, 54th, across 1,210 minutes. On a club that made the playoffs, that is a fair third season for a 21-year-old defenceman.

He is 22 and arrives in Calgary as the most valuable piece on a blue line that badly needs one. The pedigree says he should be more than an average top-four defenceman. Three seasons in, average is what the numbers say, and there is still plenty of time for that to be wrong.