Tyler Bertuzzi

Last Season

Thirty-two goals and 26 assists in 79 games — 58 points, minus-16, at 18:27 a night with 11 power-play goals.

The Finesse Game

The shot chart is the most extreme of any forward covered here. Sixty-one per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, with a median of 13 — level with Zach Benson for the shortest average distance in the edition, and Benson is a hundred and seventy-seven pound winger who gets there on quickness.

Bertuzzi gets there by refusing to leave. He is not fast, he does not beat anybody wide, and he scored thirty-two goals on the league’s worst offensive team by standing in the blue paint and taking whatever came.

The hands in tight are very good. Everything else about the offensive game is ordinary.

The Physical Game

Six foot two, 200, and genuinely unpleasant. Forty-two penalty minutes, a willingness to cross-check and be cross-checked, and an appetite for the net-front work that most skilled forwards have priced themselves out of.

This is the whole player. Take away the willingness to stand there and there is no thirty-goal season.

The Intangibles

Forty-five point one per cent of the expected goals, 14th percentile — which on this roster made him one of the better forwards, because the club was 43.2 per cent as a team.

He is 31 with 168 career goals and this was easily his best season. Eight points in his last ten.

He is also the clearest example in this book of a player built for a tight series: a heavy forward who scores from thirteen feet does not need open ice, and open ice is the first thing a playoff series takes away.