Taylor Hall

Last Season

Eighteen goals and 30 assists in 80 games — 48 points, plus-six, at 14:32 a night. Ten points in his last ten games. His 989th career game and his 787th point.

The Finesse Game

The speed that made him the first pick has gone from exceptional to good, and he has adapted the way the smart ones do. Forty-six per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, median 23, and eighteen went in on 137 shots.

He used to score from the rush. He now scores from the net front, and the conversion rate says it is working.

Thirty assists in fourteen and a half minutes a night is a genuinely good rate.

The Physical Game

Six foot one, 210, and he is heavier now than he was as a young man, which suits the game he has ended up playing. Forty-four penalty minutes. He goes to the hard ice and takes what comes.

The Intangibles

Fifty-seven per cent of the expected goals, 96th percentile, and 60.1 per cent of the shot attempts, 99th, in a third-line role.

A Hart Trophy, a first overall selection, and a career of arriving on teams just as they fell apart. He is 34 and finally on a very good one, playing fourteen minutes a night and posting some of the best underlying numbers of his life.

There is a version of this page that is sad. This is not it. He is a useful, willing, still-productive forward on a club with a real chance, and 787 points is a career almost nobody has.