Trevor van Riemsdyk

Last Season

Three goals and 11 assists in 68 games — 14 points, plus-six, at 16:14 a night with 18 penalty minutes. His five-on-five work was done in Washington.

The Finesse Game

Almost none. Sixty-four unblocked attempts from a median of 48 feet, three goals. Twenty-eight goals in 751 career games.

Eleven assists in 68 games. He makes the first pass and defends, and has done for twelve seasons.

The Physical Game

Six foot three, 210, and he defends by being early rather than by being hard. Eighteen penalty minutes in 68 games.

The skating is adequate and the positioning is why a man with no offence has played seven hundred and fifty NHL games.

The Intangibles

Exactly 50 per cent of the expected goals, 53rd percentile, against 47.9 per cent of the shot attempts, 34th, across 981 minutes on a good Washington club.

The goals went 50-44 in his favour.

He is 34, undrafted out of New Hampshire, and has built a twelve-season career out of never being the problem. Pittsburgh’s blue line needs exactly that behind two men in their late thirties.