Setting Expecations: Sven Baertschi

 

 

I recently conducted a fan Q&A and the question of "How many points will Sven Baertschi get next season?" came up. I predicted his total would land around 50 but wouldn’t really be disappointed if it ended up being slightly below that. Some agreed with me while others thought that 50 points was a little too large of total to expect out of guy in his circumstance.

The idea however intrigued me. How many points can we realistically expect out of a 20-21 year old who just recently tore up the Western league but with only 25 NHL games under his belt?

Obviously we can’t accurately predict a precise point total for Baertschi, but we can use history to approximately gauge what an appropriate expectation would be. In order to do this I took a look at past performances by NHLers in their 20-21 year old season using the 04/05 lockout as a starting point to see which group of players Baertschi could best compare to.

I looked at factors like NHL games played prior to their turning 21, their performance in their final year of pre-Pro hockey action and how good their NHL squad was that season to try and identify a pattern that would help predict future performance. There are , of course, many factors that will directly affect Baertschi’s final point total including injury, luck and role, but for this little "experiment" we’ll assume he plays 82 games.

For me, the minimum point total I’d like to see out of Baertschi in a full seasonn without feeling disappointed would be 35 (maybe more for some of you or maybe less) which works out to a point per game average of 0.427. I used that as the minimum PPG average for eligibility on the chart.

I also required the player to be within range of Baertschi’s age (20 to 21) and have 50 games played that year (that eliminates anyone from this past 48 game season or who pumped out points in a limited amount of games). Since the 2005/06 NHL season there have been 55 guys who fit those qualifications.

Take a look: 

 Bolded: Comparable to Baertschi

– Six out of the Eight players that scored at a point per game pace or better in their 21 year old season played on Top 8 NHL teams, and every one of them are currently elite players.

– With the exception of a few, every player that scored at a 0.432 PPG pace or better is currently a well established NHLer if not an above average one.

– Team Rank doesn’t appear to be a big influence on point production. The quality of line mates and competition is different on a case to case basis.

– Every single guy except Michalek scored at a CHL equivalent PPG basis in their final junior year.

At this point, the best comparables for Baertschi would be players with similar NHL experience prior to his 21 year old season, and scoring performance in their final pre-Pro season. There are a number of guys that scored within 0.500 of Baertschi’s 2.00 PPG average in the CHL, but most of them had much more NHL experience to that point in their career’s than Sven does.

Finding players with similar pre-21 GP was a lot tougher and although NHL experience in valuable, you can’t disregard Baertschi’s tremendous 2 PPG WHL season when finding comparables, so I narrowed down players who had similar numbers in both columns.

There were five guys on the chart above that best fit that criteria: Jordan Eberle, Alex Radulov, Bryan Little, Corey Perry and James Neal. All of them are quality players (even though Radulov isn’t in the NHL he’s still a special player). Ignoring stuff like size and nationality, all of these guys had a lot in common with Baertschi at this point in their careers. From the games played to the points they put up in Junior, there are many similarities to be found between Sven and the six bolded gentleman listed.

The one thing that does maybe cripple this style of predicition (aside from luck, which is impossible to predict) is the quality of teammates that the comparables played with. Eberle had equally talented young gun Taylor Hall at his side all throughout his 20/21 season, while Perry had Ryan Getzlaf.

Bryan Little spent a lot of time with Mr. KHL, Ilya Kovalchuck – who scored points during his time in the NHL like it was nobodies business – during his 21 year old season and no doubt benefited greatly from it. Thomas Vanek too saw sometime with Chris Drury and Danny Briere who were both high level NHLers at the time.

Baertschi, on the other hand, will at best be surrounded by Mike Cammalleri, Mikael Backund, Matt Stajan, Lee Stempniak or Jiri Hudler – not terrible, but certainly not a collection of all stars. Alex Radulov actually found himself in similar circumstances in Nashville, not playing with the greatest of line mates and emerged as a difference maker himself. Hopefully Baertschi is able to take a similar road this season and doesn’t pull a Patty Eaves – who only bested his 21 year old season point total once during his 9 year stay in the NHL – and become a support player.

Regardless of all this, if we were to average out the chart, it would give us a PPG average of 0.685 which translates to 56 points in 82 games. Pretty close to my random prediction of 50. I’m sure every Flames fan would be pleased if this were the actual result of Baertschi’s 2013/14 season but chances are it won’t quite end up being this high since the average skewed by outliers like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Steven Stamkos and Alex Ovechkin.

Using history like this is nowhere near an exact science and for all we know it could be completely off, but it is something. There are also factors like injury and the aforementioned line mates that could hinder Baertschi’s production, but history has shown that players that come into their 21 year old season under similar circumstances to Baertschi, tend to do pretty well.

What is your expectation for Sven Baertschi in 2013/14?