Prospect wrap-up: Andrew Mangiapane

Andrew Mangiapane has been underrated no matter where he’s been. Despite being undrafted in the OHL and undrafted in his first year of NHL eligibility, Mangiapane responded with dominant seasons that forced people to pay attention.

This season, he entered the pro ranks. And of course, he produced. Mangiapane had a pretty great rookie season, hitting 20 goals and 41 points in 66 games for the Heat and being an all around important player at age 20. For a sixth round pick, he’s been unbelievable.

He’s been an exciting prospect since he was drafted. What does his future hold?

Mangiapane has been a late bloomer wherever he’s been. He joined the OHL in his draft season, and despite a decent season finishing fifth in team scoring along with an OHL first all-rookie team nod, he went undrafted.

His second go around was much more successful, as he doubled his scoring and put up an eye-popping 104 points in 68 games, finishing eighth in scoring. Even though he was given the label of “most underrated” in the 2015 draft, it still took until the sixth round (about a round or so after he was expected to be drafted) to hear his named be called. In his final OHL year, he hit 51 goals and 106 points in 59 games, finishing sixth in the league in both points and points per game.

The numbers more or less speak for themselves. As it was in junior, Mangiapane is great at putting up primary points. Perhaps the volume is a bit low, but it was still good for fourth in team scoring.

If you see the distance between his previous year’s performance and this year’s and get concerned, you shouldn’t. Scoring in the OHL in your draft+2 year is ridiculously easy.

As we should all know by now, the Heat had a spectacular slowdown that effected everyone yadda yadda. Mangiapane seemed to suffer the most, scoring only three points during 18 games from the beginning of January to the end of February. That’s definitely not great, but if you’re a positive person, that just means he scored 38 points in the other 48 games. Silver linings.

So how unique is Mangiapane’s season? What can we expect from him based on historically similar players?

Similar rules to the last time we did it: played between the years of 2005-06 to 2014-15, between ages 20-21 as of Sept. 15, point range between 10% of his scoring (so, 0.56 PPG to 0.68 PPG), at least 15 games played, players over 200 games are considered successes. Here’s the list.

It’s a little underwhelming right now. Of 74 similar players, 27 have become successes, or about 36%. Those successes tend to have decent scoring, around 0.43 points per game.  If we cheat a little bit and include names like Johan Franson, Nick Shore, Teuvo Teravainen, and Cedric Paquette – players who will feasibly hit that 200 game mark by early next season – that success number jumps to 31, or about 42%, and PPG remains around the same, 0.42. Adding the not-quite-200 players into the mix slightly improves his numbers, but still not a sure thing.

One optimistic spin on this is that players like Mangiapane have seen success in more recent years. In the last five years, there have been 25 similar players and eight, or 32% (12 and 48% if we use the same cheats, which seems appropriate given the proximity to now) of them have surpassed that 200 game mark. More significantly, we see that every one of those eight (or 12) saw significant time in the NHL the next year. If we go outside the scope and peek at 2015-16 data (not used because it’s impossible for these guys to get to 200 games), we see the trend continue in players like Nic Petan, Marko Dano, Michael McCarron, Ryan Hartman, and Oliver Bjorkstrand. Those are five of the nine players who scored like Mangiapane and made the jump.

Long story short? The odds are very, very good that we see Mangiapane up for at least 20 games next year. Perhaps even more.

But there are still many obstacles in the way.

With a few prospects on expiring contracts to sort out, the reality is that they will likely get priority over Mangiapane. There’s no real need to rush him into the league yet.

The Flames face decisions on six prospects next year, and all of them are likely going to be in a fight for their NHL futures. Again, the number of roster spots will be limited, and you think preference goes to the older guys (if not preference, they’re probably working their asses off to get that spot). The Flames aren’t going to be stunting his growth by keeping Mangiapane out of the league -counting numbers aside, he has some minor transition and defensive issues that need ironing out- and the team isn’t going to be significantly better or worse without his presence. You can live without him for one more year.

Not to say that Mangiapane is out of the running. I would put him at one level above “dark horse” for next year’s training camp. The kid has stood out wherever he’s been, and will likely be out of the standouts in September. Don’t sleep on him.

Emile Poirier, Austin Carroll, Morgan Klimchuk, Mark Jankowski, Hunter Shinkaruk, Rasmus Andersson, Kenney Morrison, Tyler Wotherspoon, Oliver Kylington, Stepan Falkovsky, Keegan Kanzig/Mason McDonald, Ryan Culkin/Brett Pollock, Mitchell Mattson, Adam Fox, Brandon Hickey, Riley Bruce/Nick Schneider, Tyler Parsons, Eetu Tuulola, Matt Phillips, Dillon Dube, Adam Ollas Mattsson, Linus Lindstrom, Pavel Karnaukhov/Rushan Rafikov, Tim Harrison