If the Islanders never picked again in the 2009 draft after selecting John Tavares first overall, that draft still would have been one of the brightest events in franchise history. But after taking their cornerstone center, the Isles still had six picks to spend. So with their seventh and final pick, 152nd overall, they took a flyer on Anders Lee, a gifted three sport athlete from Edina, Minnesota, who had not yet decided to pursue hockey over football. Fast forward eight years and skating alongside Tavares every night is the man taken 151 picks after him, matching him goal for goal.

Lee’s path to the NHL was far from typical, but it’s safe to say he’s officially arrived. He spent the first season after his draft in the USHL where he was the leading scorer and playoff MVP for the league champion Green Bay Gamblers. He then moved to Notre Dame, where a prolific three season run ended when the Irish were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament and Lee signed his ELC with the Isles in 2013. Lee appeared in two games that season, tallying a point in each, including a goal on his first shift, and then was scratched the rest of the way. He then split the next season between Nassau and Bridgeport before finally getting a full ticket in 2014.

The rookie finished second on the Isles in goals with 25 in 76 games in 14–15, but inexplicably fell off the next year, netting just 15 goals. I for one was ready to write Lee off as a one dimensional big bodied scorer who had his moment in the sun but would ultimately be a mediocre NHLer. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong about a player before.

Lee started the 2016–17 campaign in the same slow fashion, finding the back of the net just once in his first 18 games. And then he became one of the best goal scorers in the NHL. In the 90 games since, Lee has scored 49 goals, second only to Nikita Kucherov in that time frame. This week, he recorded his 100th career goal, becoming just the 4th player to debut since 2013 to reach that mark, and the 21st fastest player to hit 100 since the 2004 lockout (287 games). Currently this season, his 16 goals in 27 games rank fourth in the NHL. Seemingly out of nowhere, Anders Lee has established himself as an elite pure goal scorer, so what gives?

The most obvious answer to Lee’s renaissance is that he ended up on John Tavares’ line, where the two have found chemistry and JT helped elevate Lee’s game. But that argument fundamentally undercuts Lee’s ability to generate offense and high danger scoring chances, something he did long before making his way to Tavares’ wing. For most of his first two seasons, Lee played alongside Ryan Strome and Brock Nelson on the “Kid Line,” where both Nelson and Strome had the most productive stretches of their careers thus far. What was seemingly overshadowed at the time thanks to the hype around all three talented youths was that Lee was the motor that drove them, and since being separated from him Strome and Nelson have been lackluster.

Now there are plenty of other reasons why Strome and Nelson have largely disappointed since 2014–15, but Lee drove possession in a way the other two were never able to, and buoyed their line. Over his career, Lee has been one of the best shot producers in the league, ranking 30th in corsi relative, notably ahead of players like Ovechkin, Gaudreau, Tarasenko and Seguin. Nelson and Strome have been net negatives relative to their teams to this point in their careers.

What has always set Lee apart though has been his tendency to fight for goals in close. In each of his first three full seasons, Lee finished in the top ten in the NHL in individual high danger chances for. Basically, Lee was in the top one percent of the league at generating high quality shots. When you think about how he plays and how he gets most of his goals, this makes a lot of sense. He hardly scores from more than 10 feet out, and has made a habit of bullying Norris-caliber defensemen for real estate at the top of the crease. Even in 2015–16, when his scoring dropped dramatically, he was still 9th in the league in iHDCF, according to NaturalStatTrick.com. That year he was just marred by terrible luck and a 4.8 shooting percentage at even strength. He’s back at it again this season, by the way, currently sitting at 12th in iHDCF.

So this string of dominance for Lee shouldn’t come as a shock. In fact, this level of play might be a lot closer to the norm than his one-off lackluster 15 goal season. Playing with Tavares has helped him elevate his game in the sense that he’s no longer trying to drag dead weight along with him. Finally he has another player next to him that compliments his game perfectly. He’s due for bit of regression thanks to a 25% shooting clip, but last year he still managed a 17.8% mark after shooting under four percent for nearly a quarter of the year. His shooting percentage will skew higher than league average because he creates dramatically more high percentage shots than the average skater. He’s on pace for 49 goals as of Dec. 7, and I think 40+ is well within his reach.

I still remember Lee’s first goal like it was yesterday, I was sitting 20 rows up from where he gathered the puck just inside the blue line and sent a shot on Ondrej Pavelec. It probably came from close to 50 feet out, and might still be the longest goal of his career and a little uncharacteristic for a Lee goal. But just like the next 99 that he put in, it was a little bit ugly but got the job done.

Anders Lee will never be the best skater, passer or sniper on the Islanders or on any team. His game will always be a little rough around the edges, but he doesn’t need to be polished. Nobody plays his style better than him, and few players are as dominant in close. We may get highlights of bar down snipes from Ovechkin and Kucherov every night until April, but Lee might just sneak up on them and steal the Richard. Then again, it’d be less like Lee to sneak up than it would be to crash in and create chaos.