Tomas Hertl

Last Season

Twenty-four goals and 34 assists in all 82 games — 58 points, minus-17, at 17:02 a night with thirteen power-play goals and 39 penalty minutes.

His 873rd career game and his 607th point.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is excellent. Three hundred and thirteen unblocked attempts with 61 per cent from inside twenty feet and a median of seventeen, and only eleven per cent from beyond forty.

Twenty-three goals out of that ice, and thirteen of his twenty-four came on a power play where he sets up in the slot and cannot be moved.

Thirty-four assists is a fair rate.

The Physical Game

Six foot three and 220 pounds, and he plays a heavy, useful game — he protects the puck below the goal line, wins the front of the net, and takes a beating in the crease. Thirty-nine penalty minutes.

Two knee reconstructions are behind him and the skating never fully came back.

The Intangibles

Fifty-five point seven per cent of the expected goals, 90th percentile, and 55.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 93rd — the best attempt share on the club — across 1,061 minutes, with the chances 45.6 to 36.3 in his favour and the goals 49-42.

And a minus-17, on a club where every regular forward finished above the eighty-third percentile in chance share. That number is short-handed ice and empty nets, and it describes nothing that happened at five-on-five.

Four points in his last ten. He is 32, and this is a genuinely good second-line centre with a hockey card that says otherwise.