OTTAWA, Ontario — If you want to understand how Mathew Barzal’s game has evolved over the years, and the ways in which his teammates have helped enable what might quietly be the best season of his career, there are worse places to start than Emil Heineman’s goal against Toronto on Tuesday night.

The shift leading into the goal, on which Barzal notched a secondary assist, featured No. 13 doing something he’s always done: peeling behind the net with the puck and cutting back up.

On either side of that, though, were two puck retrievals that kept a long cycle shift going.

And instead of drifting around the zone so long that the play died out, Barzal quickly found Tony DeAngelo off that cut, again keeping the play going.