Jason Dickinson

Last Season

Seven goals and 17 points in 64 games split between Chicago and Edmonton, fifteen minutes a night. He has never scored twenty in a season and is not paid to.

The Finesse Game

Modest offensively and honest about it. The shot is ordinary, the hands are ordinary, and the offense he does produce comes from being in the right place after a turnover rather than from creating anything himself.

What he does have is real speed, and he uses it the way a checking center should — closing on defensemen, taking away time on breakouts, and beating forwards back to loose pucks. He is a strong penalty killer for exactly that reason: he pressures the puck without opening a lane behind him.

He wins his share of draws and, more usefully, he wins the ones in his own end late in games.

The Physical Game

Six-two and 200, and he plays a rangy, positional physical game rather than a punishing one. He ends plays by being in the lane, not by running people over. He blocks shots willingly.

The Intangibles

Five hundred and sixty-six games of this is not an accident. Coaches keep employing him because the defensive detail is genuine, and because he can take a defensive-zone draw against a top line without needing to be protected afterward.

The honest limitation: on a team that scores as much as this one, a fourth-line center who contributes nothing offensively is a luxury only if the defensive value is real. In his case it is.