Flames October Prospect NHLE 2013-14

 

 Via the NHL

Another year, another year of monthly NHLE updates.

Go here for a primer on NHLE if you need it, otherwise, hit the jump and we’ll get started.

Monahan’s scoring pace is unsustainable, full stop. The team is scoring goals at a rate they haven’t in like three seasons (3 GPG) and will likely regress to anywhere between 2.5 and 2.75 by the end of the season. That means his assist production will likely go down, and his shooting percentage is likely to decrease from where it was at the time of writing (~19.4%) to about 12% or 13%. However, that’s not going to make him unique on the team, pretty much everyone on the NHL roster right now (with the exceptions of Baertschi, Galliardi and Backlund) will likely see a little drop in production overall. As long as he keeps his shot stats up, I’ll be happy with even as little as 35 points (depending on PP time).

Gaudreau’s scoring pace, however, is totally sustainable. He’s the best player in the NCAA and he plays on a powerhouse team. In fact, I’d actually put money on him increasing his NHLE by the end of the year. I watched the Minnesota – BC game last week and there wasn’t a time that Gaudreau was on the ice that I didn’t notice him immediately. His size provides zero impediment to his game right now.

Poirier’s scoring pace isn’t totally surprising, given his point splits from last year. I think he drops back a little but he’s tracking like a first line winger would right now. I believe that he and Klimchuk will be within about 3 points of each other at the end of the year.

Sven’s right around where I thought he’d be. Expect his scoring pace to stay consistent: even though team scoring might decrease, he’s only shooting about 8% right now and I expect he’ll start to get a little more PP time. To my eye, he is looking excellent in all factes of the game. He is still on track to be a top-6 forward.

Arnold plays with Gaudreau, so add that plus his team plus the fact that he’s usually good for around a point per game and I see his scoring staying pretty consistent. He’s still tracking to be a bottom-6 centre, but a good one.

Jankowski’s numbers look okay right now, but he’s only averaging 2.8 SH/G (I’d like at least 3.25). His SH% is also almost 30%, which is huge. Expect a little regression in GPG. He’s also been a bit unlucky on the assists part of it, though – only 1 on 24 goals means you can expect a few more apples. I feel as though his scoring pace as a whole will stay around 30 unless he increases his shots a substantial amount. While that’s a good jump year-over-year, it’s still a little bit behind the pace we’d want to see from a potential top-6 centreman.

Knight and Hanowski are scoring at a pretty good pace, but not one that is top-6 material simply because their shooting percentages are pretty high right now. Abbotsford as a whole struggles to score (22 goals at even strength in 10 games, which is garbage) so don’t expect them to decrease a significant in terms of production. As their SH% increases, (hopefully) Abbotsford will start scoring more, which will lead to more assists for them.

Klimchuk’s raw totals are a little low, but he’s in on 44.3% of team scoring and his goals-per-game are down a little, which is likely a function of luck. The WHL doesn’t keep shot data but I can’t see any reason why he’d be shooting less this year than last, so that means you should expect a bit of a bump in his goals based on his GPG from last year. He’s leading his team in points and only has 2 penalty minutes on the season.

Gordon’s scoring at an okay pace, but his skating will likely hold him back from making an impact at the next level.

Granlund, Horak, Reinhart, and Jooris are all falling victim to the low scoring Heat for one reason or another. Granlund, Horak and Reinhart are among the team’s shot leaders but they’re not getting the bounces (all have SH% under 10%). Expect a little bump from those three down the road. The shot volume they’re getting is very impressive. Jooris, on the other hand, only has 10 shots (not good) but is shooting at 10%, so you can still expect a marginal increase down the line.

Agostino hasn’t played enough games yet (only 2). Ferland, Harrison, Elson and DeBlouw are all performing about as good as a replacement level AHLer would.

Gilmour’s totals are a little inflated becuase he’s got a couple points on the PP and Providence has scored 24 goals in just 5 games. If the team keeps up that scoring pace, Gilmour might be able to keep his pace up. However, I don’t think that’s super likely as his SH% should come down a tiny bit more and Providence probably won’t continue to score 5 goals per game the rest of the season. Still, a positive result for the Soph.

Kulak and Culkin are both in their 20 year old seasons in the CHL, so while this level of production is nice early on, take it with a little grain of salt. We’ll re-evaluate in November.

Roy has had a fantastic start to the year on a brutal Wheat Kings team. He’s in on about 22% of the team’s scoring (very healthy for a 5th round defenseman) and to my eye he’s playing in all situations. Something like this current pace being kept up is very likely.

Wotherspoon and Cundari have reportedly been fine on the farm but like the forwards they’ve suffered with the team’s lack of scoring. Both should increase their totals soon.

Rafikov doesn’t have overwhelming totals but the MHL is a garbage league and he’s the team leader in points by a defenseman. Hopefully he can move up to the KHL at some point this season.

Kanzig’s not looking too good at this point of the season. He’s actually behind the miniscule scoring pace he had last year. Defensemen who don’t score at least .2 PPG in the CHL don’t have much of a hope of making it to the NHL. I understand that “he wasn’t drafted for his point totals” but it stands to reason that a guy with enough hockey talent to be drafted in the 3rd round would be able to at least get to .2 PPG in a league where right now he’s ostensibly better than at least 50% of the players around him. He is not tracking well, and it’s not his team’s fault, either: he’s been in on 1.6% of the team’s goals.

Sieloff hasn’t played enough games yet as he’s fighting an infection in his cheekbone after minor surgery. Go fighting! Ramage is not performing well at all by this measure and I can’t find any positives right now.

We will see a significant jump from the line of Horak – Granlund – Reinhart: at least 10 points between the three of them.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.