There’s a point in a breakout season where something happens to make the hockey world take notice.

In 2011-12, Johnny Gaudreau was really promising for pretty much the entire season after arriving at Boston College from the United States Hockey League’s Dubuque Fighting Saints. He had a few really impressive outings that made the hockey establishment take notice, including a strong pair of games during the Beanpot and a strong run through the playoffs en route to an NCAA national championship.

Gaudreau was consistently effective and noticeable even when he wasn’t scoring, and he ended up posting 44 points in 44 games as an 18-year-old freshman. He was not yet dominant – 44 points was good enough for the top 25 in the nation and he led all freshmen in scoring, but not by a huge margin – but there were glimpses of the dominance that would follow in his sophomore and junior seasons.

But let’s call a spade a spade here: Gaudreau was a dominant offensive presence at every level of hockey prior to college, and any skepticism about his scoring prowess translating usually centred on his size. He was listed, generously, at 5’7″ and 150 pounds by Boston College in his freshman year, and he didn’t exactly come out of nowhere – believers and skeptics were focused on B.C. from the get-go to see if veteran coach Jerry York could turn him into the next Cam Atkinson.

So with that preamble in mind, we need to talk about NCAA leading scorer Ethan Wyttenbach, who is one of the most exciting players in all of junior or college hockey right now.

A fifth-round pick by the Flames back in June’s draft, Wyttenbach is a “true” freshman who turned 19 last week. In his first season of college hockey, coming off off-season knee surgery, he has 21 goals and 51 points through 32 games. 21 goals is one off the NCAA lead. 30 assists is tied for the NCAA lead. 51 points leads the NCAA, eight points more than the next-best player. Wyttenbach has 15 more points than the next-best freshman, Philadelphia Flyers prospect (and sixth overall pick) Porter Martone.

This all sounds pretty impressive, right? Let’s add a bit of context.

From the past 25 years, here’s an exhaustive list of forwards that the Flames drafted in their first year of eligibility (as 18-year-olds) and who went to college the next season. We’ll sort this by points-per-game for convenience.

(Note: Potter is the only player here that played in the NCAA in their 17-year-old season, too. Everybody else played elsewhere and then moved into the NCAA for their 18-year-old season.)

There were 11 draftees that made the jump prior to this season, and just two produced at a point-per-game or higher: Gaudreau and Matt Coronato. That’s the list. (Coronato? A pretty dominant goal-scorer prior to reaching college, including two seasons scoring many goals in the USHL.) And while it’s impressive that Cullen Potter and Cole Reschny have joined that small group this season, Wyttenbach’s freshman production has eclipsed them all. By a lot.

Two years ago, Wyttenbach was playing high-end youth hockey on Long Island. One year ago, he was in the middle of a pretty effective (but not quite dominant) rookie season in the USHL. And right now, he’s the top scorer in all of college hockey.

There aren’t a ton of players that have had freshman seasons like Wyttenbach is having.

The ones that had them turned out to be pretty good pros.