Flames 1st Round Comparables

 

 

A couple weeks ago, we looked at Sean Monahan’s NHL comparables. He appeared to line up quite favourably compared to his notable peers.

But just using the NHL leaves out a huge swath of data, so I went back and looked for players that were comparable to each of the Flames first 3 picks to try and get an idea of what we should expect from them in the future. 

The qualifications are as follows:

Here’s what we came up with.

Logan Couture, Jeff Skinner, Matt Duchene, Sven Baertschi, Brayden Schenn, Nazem Kadri, Gabriel Landeskog and Cody Hodgson are all legit top-6 players and as a whole are generally trending towards being excellent-to-elite players at the NHL level – eventually.

Josh Bailey is starting to reach his potential and Gilbert Brule has had some off ice issues that may have contributed to his lacklustre play. They’re not elite players in any sense, but they’re NHLers.

Marek Zagrapan was a good prospect to start, but didn’t improve much year-over-year in junior. It seems as though he was good enough to play bottom-6 minutes in the NHL, but for whatever reason he went to play in the KHL at the age of 22. Since then, he’s bounced around leagues with minimal success.

Zach Hamill scored at a pretty good pace in the AHL, but not at the level a top-10 pick needs to score at. He also had a significant drop in his draft +1 year, which suggests that his scoring in his draft year was influenced by PP scoring – 17 of his 32 goals were on the PP. His team was also the WHL’s best in his draft season.

Alex Bourret was an Atlanta Thrashers draft pick, so that’s all you need to know. Judging by his stats, he should’ve been an NHLer, but he wasn’t able to make the jump.

James Sheppard is in the same boat as Bourret: he had a few more PP points in his draft season but it didn’t appear to me that that number was egregious. Another guy that for whatever reason couldn’t make the jump, perhaps because he was rushed to the show by the Wild and played in some tough circumstances from day 1.

Scott Glennie played on a stacked team with Brayden Schenn for two seasons and scored a significant amount of points on the PP. He also recorded a secondary assist percentage of 52% in his draft year, indicating his output was inflated.

This list has a lot less NHL-quality talent, but in recent years the comparables for Poririer have improved. Many of those guys are high-end prospects in their respective organizations or are enjoying NHL success at varying degrees. 

I view Ty Rattie, Mark McNeill, Stefan Noesen, Radek Faksa, Philip Danualt, Quinton Howden, Vlad Namestinkov and Brendan Gaunce as good prospects, most of whom are tracking well.

Nick Foligino, Jordan Eberle, Wojtek Wolski, Dave Bolland and Zack Kassian are all top-9 NHLers to varying degrees.

Kenndal McArdle started out as a good prospect, but there were plenty of warning of signs as to why he might not turn out: first, his PPG year-over-year skyrocketed (.29 in his draft-1 year) and then he kind of regressed in the next season even though the team improved significantly. He is now playing in the SHL-2.

Joey Hishon has struggled with head injuries lately but improved his NHLE from 30.7 in his 18 year old season to 42.8 in his 20 year old season. He is currently suffering from post-concussive syndrome, but possible future injuries are rarely taken into account when determining the quality of a player.

Zach Boychuk was drafted after his 17 year old season, where he posted an NHLE of 29.0. However, that was a sharp drop from his 16 year old season, where his NHLE was 32.5. Lack of improvement year-over-year (especially when factoring physical development in) is generally a warning sign. He has torn up the AHL, however, and is still just 23, so he still has a chance to play meaningful bottom-6 minutes.

Peter Holland is one of Anaheim’s best centre prospects. In his 20 year old season he recorded an NHLE of 30.5 at the AHL level and in this past year he managed to improve on that by almost 10 whole points – 39.1.

Greg Nemisz can’t skate and was carried by Josh Bailey, Adam Henrique, Ryan Ellis, Andrei Loktionov and Taylor Hall during his time in Windsor.

I have no idea what happened to Ryan O’Marra.

A lot of players here are also on Poirier’s comparable list, but there are a couple intriguing new names.

Boone Jenner was drafted after his 17 year old season and is one of Columbus’ best prospects. His NHLE this season (19 years old) was 36.0. He has played with Scott Laughton and Nicklas Jensen in Oshawa, which has been one of the OHL’s better teams the past couple of years.

Ryan O’Reilly made the jump straight to the NHL, playing his 18 year old season in Denver. O’Reiliy’s underlying stats paint him as a first line centre in the same mould as Daymond Langkow. Langkow is also a good offensive comparable, but given that O’Reiliy scored at a .7 PPG pace this season in the NHL, he may have more offensive upside than previously thought.

Nicolas Deschamps is currently not doing much in the Capitals organization, managing an NHLE of about 15.4 this season. However, in his draft year, he had a lot of ice time with 20 year old on a playoff team.

Nicklas Jensen’s 27.5 NHLE this season was a bit up from his draft season, but not terribly encouraging. Although, it is worth noting he spent the majority of the season in Sweden’s top league playing against men. I believe he has a chance to make the Canucks this year in a bottom-6 role.

All three players are above average when compared to those drafted around them year to year, which is a good thing. For the most part, all three lists have a large amount of NHL talent. It’s unrealistic to expect that the Flames just drafted Couture, Bolland and O’Reiliy – but it’s a pretty safe bet that at least one of these guys turns out to be a decent player. 

In terms of results for next season and what I’d like to see – for Monahan, a PPG of 1.55 or higher would be nice (if he plays in the OHL) and Klimchuk and Poirier should be expected to hit 1.25 PPG.