Viktor Arvidsson

Last Season

Twenty-five goals and 29 assists in 69 games — 54 points, plus-20, at 14:36 a night. His five-on-five work was done in Boston.

The Finesse Game

A shooter’s shooter. Two hundred and sixty-three unblocked attempts in 69 games from a median of 28 feet with 41 per cent inside twenty, and 25 goals — a high rate from a player getting under fifteen minutes a night.

Two hundred and nineteen goals in 682 career games. The release has never been the question.

The Physical Game

Five foot ten, 181, and he plays a great deal harder than that. He forechecks with genuine intent and takes the punishment in front of the net that a man his size has no business taking. Twenty-four penalty minutes.

The durability is the cost: 69 games last season, and he has passed 70 twice in five years.

The Intangibles

The plus-20 was earned on a club that was outscored, which is unusual, and the underlying numbers do not support it: 47.2 per cent of the expected goals, 28th percentile, in 843 minutes.

Boston finished 21st and 24th in expected goals and got carried by its goaltender, so read the plus figure as Swayman’s rather than his.

He is 33 and arrives on a club that finished third on the power play and needed another finisher for it. Twenty-five goals in fourteen minutes a night is a real return, and it is the sort of thing that keeps arriving until it suddenly does not.