Tage Thompson

Last Season

Forty goals and 41 assists in 81 games — 81 points, minus-six, at 19:15 a night. Two hundred and seventy-two shots on goal, the most on the club by a distance.

The Finesse Game

The shot is the best on the roster and one of the best in the league. It is heavy, it is quick, and at six foot six the release point is somewhere a goaltender has not seen a puck come from before.

Where he takes them is the striking part: the median unblocked attempt came from 32 feet, with 29 per cent from beyond forty and only 28 per cent from inside twenty. He is scoring 40 goals from the outside, which almost nobody does, and it works because the shot is genuinely exceptional rather than because the chances are good.

The hands for a man this size are absurd. He handles pucks in traffic that players a foot shorter would lose.

The Physical Game

Six foot six and 220 and he is not a punishing player — 35 penalty minutes, and he wins position with reach rather than force. He gets knocked off pucks more than a man his size should.

The Intangibles

Here is where the two accounts part company. The scoreboard says a 40-goal, 81-point centre. The five-on-five record says 49.5 per cent of the expected goals, 48th percentile — dead average — with the goals 47-45 and the expected goals slightly against him at 52.2 to 53.3.

Both are real. He is a genuine finisher on a club that led the NHL in scoring above its expected goals by 41, and some of that is him and some of it is the whole room shooting hot at once.

Ten points in his last ten games. He is 28 and this is his level.