Yan Kuznetsov

Last Season

Four goals and eight assists in 57 games, minus-eight, at 20:05 a night. His first real NHL season, and 58 career games in total.

The Finesse Game

Not present. Eighty-one unblocked attempts from a median of 53 feet with five per cent inside twenty, four goals. Eight assists in 57 games.

He moves it short and safe. There is no evidence yet of a player who will add anything at the offensive blue line.

The Physical Game

Six foot four, 209, and it is what he is for. He defends the net front, closes hard, and takes the body. Twenty-eight penalty minutes in 57 games of heavy minutes is disciplined.

The Intangibles

The results were poor without being the worst here: 47 per cent of the expected goals, 26th percentile, with the goals level at 49-50 across a thousand minutes and the expected goals 42.6 to 48.1 against.

He is 24, a second-round pick, and playing twenty minutes a night because Calgary’s alternatives are a twenty-year-old and a thirty-five-year-old. That is not the same as having earned it, and the club would be better off if it were not true.

Two points in his last ten. This season decides whether he is a third-pair defenceman or the top-four one he is currently being asked to be.