Troy Stecher

Last Season

Three goals and 11 assists in 64 games — 14 points, minus-eight, at 19:11 a night with twenty penalty minutes.

His 624th career game.

The Finesse Game

A hundred and three unblocked attempts from a median of 46 feet, 68 per cent from beyond forty, three goals. Twenty-five goals in 624 career games.

Eleven assists in 64 games is thin. A hundred and thirty-one points in ten seasons is the record of a defenceman who has never had an offensive game and has never pretended to.

The Physical Game

Five foot ten and 184 pounds, and among the smallest defencemen in the league. Twenty penalty minutes.

He cannot clear a crease and loses net-front battles as a matter of physics. He compensates with positioning and a very active stick, and he blocks a great many shots for a man his size.

The Intangibles

Forty-six point seven per cent of the expected goals, 24th percentile, and 45.2 per cent of the shot attempts, 13th, across 1,082 minutes, with the goals 48-54 against.

Nineteen minutes a night is more than this player should be asked for, and Toronto asked because it had nobody else.

Three points in his last ten. He is 32, undrafted out of North Dakota, and six hundred games into a career that has been a compliment to his persistence at every stop.