Valeri Nichushkin

Last Season

Seventeen goals and 32 assists in 72 games — 49 points, plus-nine, at 17:44 a night. His five-on-five work was done in Colorado, where he was on for 57.6 per cent of the expected goals — 97th percentile.

The Finesse Game

A large man with unusually soft hands, and the combination is why he has been a valuable playoff forward wherever he has been. He protects the puck below the goal line, he finds the seam pass out of the corner, and he gets to the middle: 41 per cent of his unblocked attempts came from inside twenty feet, median 25.

Twenty-one goals from 241 attempts. He has never been a volume shooter and the conversion is good.

The Physical Game

Six foot four, 210, and he plays heavy without taking penalties — twenty-six penalty minutes in 72 games. He forechecks properly, he wins wall battles, and he is difficult to move from in front of the net.

The Intangibles

The numbers are excellent and they were earned on the second-best possession team in the league, which is the caveat: 97th percentile in Colorado is not 97th percentile everywhere.

Set against that, the goals went 50-34 in his favour and the expected goals 49.8 to 36.6 — he was ahead on both counts, which is not something the system alone produces.

He is 31, a tenth overall pick who took the long way round, and he arrives on a club that was seventh in even-strength expected goals and needed exactly this kind of forward. He is the sort of player who matters more in a series than in a season.