Prospect Info: Jets Top Prospects Poll: #9 Prospect

[MardyBum]

Goal scoring? This kid goes to the net with a drive. Look at where Stastny and Tanev, for that matter, scored from in the playoffs. Greasy goals. He is not developmentally as far as either Ehlers or Roslovic, for sure. Ehlers got pulled from the Q at 19, Roslovic because of his American passport got to play with the Moose at 19. Mc Kenzie with a January birthday, and CHL status, had to wait the extra year, to get there, not that he was high on the prospect list to begin with. When Suess went down, we lost our centre depth on the Moose, with Girard moving up to #3, and Mc Kenzie buried behind vets like Shaw, Griffith, Lipon and Dano for playing time. Not to mention further along prospects like Appleton, Spacek and Harkins.

I just think this kid is the engine that could, I see him as an NHL player, and given my previous argument I'd like to know how we get all those defensemen to the NHL, if they are as good as we rate them? I've been wrong many a time, and I am not even married, maybe I am wrong again.

"(junior numbers were on par, given the nature of the two leagues"

McKenzie -

D+1 - 72 games played - 42 goals 42 assists - 84 points
D+2 - 72 games played - 47 goals 40 assists - 87 points

So he improved his point totals by 3 points, and his draft year was poor enough he wasn't drafted.

Ehlers -

D+1 - 51 games played - 37 goals 64 assists - 101 points
D+2 - 72 games played - 15 goals 23 assists - 38 points in the NHL

And in his draft year he put up 49 goals and 55 assists in 63 games.

McKenzie just had 16 points in 47 AHL games in his D+3. Ehlers put up 25 goals and 64 points in the NHL in his D+3.

Now lets compare Michael Spacek -

D+1 - 61 games played - 18 goals 36 assists - 54 points
D+2 - 59 games played - 30 goals 55 assists - 85 points

And in his D+3 he had 70 games played in the AHL for 38 points.

McKenzie was passed over in the draft after playing 2 full seasons in the WHL for a reason. He had a nice explosion in his D+1 season, then stayed pretty static in his D+2. He had an okay season in his D+3. He's not the only later round pick that was buried at times on the Moose. Spacek played plenty of third/fourth line as well.

He's an okay prospect who might carve out a path, but it seems strange to rank a prospect because you think we can trade away better players then slot him in? The good dmen will make the team. Stanley's far away from a sure thing, in 2 years Buff could be gone. Pionk hasn't shown anything to have him in the top 4, he might not even be on the Jets in 2 years.

 

[surixon]

Chisholm and Vallati are among the most productive D prospects we've seen in the Jets 2.0 era. Pacing behind Trouba, Morrissey, Heinola and Niku. In around Samberg.

Decent two-way defenders. Declan can move and he led his team in scoring for most of the year (until the Merkley trade). Vallati likes to smash stuff.

Surprised to see them get so little love.

Chisholm is next on the list for me.

 

[jetsforever]

Kovacevic, add Blaisdell

 

[GumbyCan2]

Nikkanen, because I still have hope he could be the 2C we need. Eventually.

Please add Blaisdell.

Don't personally know enuff about Nikkanen's game to project but I do agree to add Blaisdell in the mix. Great Can-prairie blood-lines, heart&soul guy with some upside!

 

[Whileee]

Which Jets D prospect had a higher NHL points equivalency in their D+2 season?

A. Sami Niku (Liiga)?
B. Kovacevic (Hockey East)?




Correct answer is "B".

I think many fans aren't well acquainted by how tough it is for young D to produce a lot of points in the top NCAA leagues, which leads to some undervalueing of prospects like Kovacevic and Samberg.

 

[truck]

I am just trying to figure this out. Let's assume everyone progresses. 2 years time Jets roster is something like

Morrisey-? (Buff)
Samberg-Pionk
Stanley-Niku
Poolman/Kovacevic?

Moose have

Heinola-Lundmark
Chisholm-Vallati
Vet-Green/Gawanke

Now how many of these guys are for real? And are we drafting Heinola to replace Morrisey?

Who gets knocked out of lineup by the prospects? What is their redeemable value? Other than Morrissey, can any of them be moved for a top 6 centre? Right now I think only Samberg carries that value?

Meanwhile I look at a kid like Mc Kenzie, who was good enough to ride shotgun with Cody Glass, as someone who could very well replace an Ehlers (junior numbers were on par, given the nature of the two leagues (can anyone name a recent defenseman out of the Q, who is defensively gifted, other than Zadorov, maybe Chabot?)) or Roslovic, giving us a means to obtaining a top 6 centre.

Maybe my logic is flawed, maybe not?

Yeah. Your logic is 100% flawed.

Many of those D won't make it. McKenzie is just a guy. He's similar production wise to Lipon, Spacek, Lowry and Kosmachuk. He's nowhere near Ehlers. That's just silly.

 

[ps241]

I like them both too.

I was hoping we'd see more obvious growth out of Kovacevic this year, but I'm still high on him.

I pegged Chisholm for a break out too. I was happy to see him deliver.

I have Kovy here, then Chis.

I see a bit of a drop off after that.

Yea I was hoping for a bit more out of Kovacevic too but from what I am to understand the team was not good and he still did well in a tough situation. Joe was chatting with a scout who is familiar with Jonathan and he said people are going to be surprised when they watch him because he can be leaned on and he does well in all situations. I am hoping he gets a heavy roll as the season progresses similar to Stanley last season.

Chisholm had an outstanding breakout season. He was leading his team in scoring and over a PPG past the first half of the season until they traded for Merkley and my guess is his roll modified because his scoring slowed. I chatted with Peterborough fans and Brock about Chisholm and his top attribute is his skating. He plays a very rounded game on the top pairing as their shit down defender against all the toughest lines in the OHL and drove the bus for the Pete’s this past season.

Both the guys listed above played the roll of “the man” on their respective teams this past season which is why I like them both allot in a realistic, dark horse, non blue chip pick outside the top 60 in both their drafts kind of a way.

I am way less familiar with Gawanke and Vallati so it’s hard to peg them against my two favorites of this cluster. This is the group of four that I am hoping one guy hits from. By hit I mean if any one of them can hold their own water in a top 4 roll one day we will be in a really good position IMO. All of them have flashed some chops so fingers crossed. Looking back it’s not really common to find solid top 4 defenders later in the draft in the heavily scouted leagues so I know I am in dark horse territory but hell Buff and Toby and to a much lesser degree so far Niku were all late picks. It can and does happen from time to time.

 

[DEANYOUNGBLOOD17]

I am hoping Chisholm has a breakout season ..... similar to Durzi the last 2 years. The table is set for him as a 19 year old in his final OHL season. With the expierence he gained last year being the man on D and another year of growth and maturity..... he should be well over a p.p.g player.

Kovacevic should be our 9 over all prospect. He played on a last place NCAA team with no offensive output and was able to keep them respectable most nights being their main guy on Defence.

He has a full year on the the farm /Moose but I expect to see the same growth as we saw with Poolman being our best D-man on some nights in the AHL.

Spacek is under rated so far. He is an offensive guy that is plugged into that 3 rd line supplemental scorer role on the Moose so his # s do not jump off the page. That is the same bottom 6 role he is chasing on the Jets. I expect to see him get s NHL taste this year as a injury call up.

Nikkanen can wait a while on this list. I know he was rated higher in the draft but fell due to injury issues. But bottom line is he should not jump the Q on this prospect list based on Wpg. Hfb members hope that we found a diamond in the ruff. He is a prospect 2-3 years away from joining the Moose. Let’s not rush and place him higher than he should be on our list based on hope. Let us hope he can prove it this year and be our biggest riser on next years list. I hope he can make his WJ team and have a really good showing against his peers and a strong showing in men’s Liga league.

Gawanke waited until his last junior year D+2 to breakout. This has me hesitant on his upside. I would hold off on rating him to high as well. I would rate Vallati higher than him.

Skylar McKenzie is small and I see him going the same route as Lodge, Kosmo-chuck,Gennaro and Stallard. Nothing to see here....move along.....move along.

Edit.....My next picks are....

9) Kovecevic
10) Chisholm
11) Spacek
12) Vallati
13) Luke Green
14) Gawanke
15) Lundmark
16) Nikkanen
17) Harkins
18 Blaisdell
19) Smith
20) Neaton..... Voodoo Goalie

 

[Halberdier]

Which Jets D prospect had a higher NHL points equivalency in their D+2 season?

A. Sami Niku (Liiga)?
B. Kovacevic (Hockey East)?




Correct answer is "B".

I think many fans aren't well acquainted by how tough it is for young D to produce a lot of points in the top NCAA leagues, which leads to some undervalueing of prospects like Kovacevic and Samberg.

Those "equivalent NHL points" should be taken with a bucket full of salt regarding Liiga (FEL). FEL is maybe the most defensively oriented and the tightest coached league in the world, so it's actually really hard to score points there. I don't think you can realistically compare FEL points to Boston area / New England university & college league points.

 

[truck]

Those "equivalent NHL points" should be taken with a bucket full of salt regarding Liiga (FEL). FEL is maybe the most defensively oriented and the tightest coached league in the world, so it's actually really hard to score points there. I don't think you can realistically compare FEL points to Boston area / New England university & college league points.

They are taken with a grain of salt, but the whole purpose is to level off the companion across leagues. They tend to serve this purpose well.

 

[lomiller1]

They are taken with a grain of salt, but the whole purpose is to level off the companion across leagues. They tend to serve this purpose well.

Sample size is an issue for a few Euro leagues, but I think Liiga may be hit particularly hard. When I looked in depth a couple years ago IIRC there were under 20 players used to generate the NHLe for Liiga and more than half were Journeymen in their 20’s who came over if a 3-4 year span following the 2003 lockout.

I wasn’t super rigorous about it but I also took a quick look at players going back and forth between the Swiss A league and Liiga, and what I saw in the head to head comparison suggested Liiga was the stronger league. NHLe, however paints the Swiss A league as stronger. Both leagues were mostly based on Journyman that didn’t stick in the NHL for more than a couple years but players from the Swiss league seemed to have an easier time getting into offensive roles in the NHL.

Again, this is just my recollection of a fairly quick look I took a few years ago so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Whileee]

Sample size is an issue for a few Euro leagues, but I think Liiga may be hit particularly hard. When I looked in depth a couple years ago IIRC there were under 20 players used to generate the NHLe for Liiga and more than half were Journeymen in their 20’s who came over if a 3-4 year span following the 2003 lockout.

I wasn’t super rigorous about it but I also took a quick look at players going back and forth between the Swiss A league and Liiga, and what I saw in the head to head comparison suggested Liiga was the stronger league. NHLe, however paints the Swiss A league as stronger. Both leagues were mostly based on Journyman that didn’t stick in the NHL for more than a couple years but players from the Swiss league seemed to have an easier time getting into offensive roles in the NHL.

Again, this is just my recollection of a fairly quick look I took a few years ago so take it with a grain of salt.

Analysts that have developed and refined the NHLe factors have looked in some depth at those issues. They aren't perfect by any means, but my main point is that we too often dismiss D prospects in the NCAA based purely on their modest point production without taking into account the analyses that have shown how D have transitioned from that league to the NHL. Kovacevic and Samberg are two recent examples that I think are undervalued due to a casual view of their point production.

 

[Halberdier]

They are taken with a grain of salt, but the whole purpose is to level off the companion across leagues. They tend to serve this purpose well.

They could (and should), but for some very odd reason Hockey East is (or at least was a couple of years ago) considered much harder, not easier league than FEL, which is frankly insane, and thus NHLe values are working totally wicked way for comparing FEL and Hockey East. So in fact, direct 1 to 1 point comparison between FEL and Hockey East would be more fair (but still unfair towards to FEL players) than using NHLe that got it backwards.

I don't know where to look at for the recent NHLe values, but I refer to this:


I suspect that the problem with some of those NHLe numbers are that at certain point there have been only a handful players coming straight from FEL to NHL, and furthermore most of them have been defensive defenders or guys that were playing on offensive role on FEL, but turned to be defensive specialists in NHL. Just for fun, looking at scores by Mikko Rantanen, Sebastian Aho & Patrik Laine you could joke that FEL NHLe value should be close to 1.00, not 0.29.

Also there is a factor that should be remembered: FEL is a professional league for grown up adults, not an university rookie league. Therefore for a very young guy such as Niku (and Rantanen, Aho, Laine) playing at FEL it would not be fair to use straight NHLe value, even if that NHLe value was not wrong in the first place.

 

[Halberdier]

Looking at their most comparable seasons (same age, or Niku being 3 months younger)

A) 2016-2017 59. 5 + 22 = 27 0.46 PPG (FEL)

B) 2017-2018 34. 2 + 15 = 17 0.50 PPG (NCAA)

I'd take any given day A over B, regardless that there is a theoretical NHLe that tells us NCAA is much better / more transferable to NHL than FEL. Sample sizes, I guess.

You cannot yet compare their AHL performance, as Kovacevic only had 1 game last season:


A) 2017-2018 76. 16 + 38 = 54 0.71 PPG (AHL)

B) 2018-2019 1. 1 + 1 = 2 2.00 PPG (AHL)

...but for sure Kovacevic had a good start and let's hope he can keep it up ;-)

EDIT: I now see @Whileee is using D+2 instead of age group. Does anyone know why Kovacevic was not drafted already 2016 but only 2017? Obviously for 2015 draft he was some 3 months too young.

 

[Rheged]

I'm working on some updated league translation numbers right now, a big piece of how I'm doing it is promoting the player through the league with the biggest sample of promoted players rather than just jumping straight to the NHL for everyone. It likes Euro leagues much much more.

For the Niku/Kovacevic at 19 comparison for instance right now I have Niku at 19 points and Kovacevic at 13. There's still some changes I need to make but that will mostly effect CHL players so I think this two are pretty likely to stay like this.

 

[lomiller1]

I'm working on some updated league translation numbers right now, a big piece of how I'm doing it is promoting the player through the league with the biggest sample of promoted players rather than just jumping straight to the NHL for everyone. It likes Euro leagues much much more.

For the Niku/Kovacevic at 19 comparison for instance right now I have Niku at 19 points and Kovacevic at 13. There's still some changes I need to make but that will mostly effect CHL players so I think this two are pretty likely to stay like this.

Any idea when we can see the numbers? Even for fairly good leagues like Finland/Switzerland it looks like the sample size on players going direct to the NHL is too small. The massive difference just one or two players make between Rob Vollman’s 2015 numbers for SM Liiga (0.29) and his 2018 number (0.45) really highlights this IMO.

 

[Rheged]

Any idea when we can see the numbers? Even for fairly good leagues like Finland/Switzerland it looks like the sample size on players going direct to the NHL is too small. The massive difference just one or two players make between Rob Vollman’s 2015 numbers for SM Liiga (0.29) and his 2018 number (0.45) really highlights this IMO.

I had started an exercise like this a couple year ago and was kinda shocked at how small the sample of players jumping from some leagues directly to the NHL was yeah. There was one specifically I remember as funny actually, I think Allsvenskan was higher than SHL and it was because it was a sample of like 4 guys and one of them was a defenseman who just happened to have scored very little in the previous season. Most of the Euro pro leagues have 2.5 to 3 times the number of players jumping to the AHL first rather than the NHL.. Even the KHL has more go AHL first which kinda surprised me.

Not sure when I'll 'done' haha, I had wanted to have something more solid by now but it's taking a little more time than I had hoped.

 

[GumbyCan2]

I am hoping Chisholm has a breakout season ..... similar to Durzi the last 2 years. The table is set for him as a 19 year old in his final OHL season. With the expierence he gained last year being the man on D and another year of growth and maturity..... he should be well over a p.p.g player.

Kovacevic should be our 9 over all prospect. He played on a last place NCAA team with no offensive output and was able to keep them respectable most nights being their main guy on Defence.

He has a full year on the the farm /Moose but I expect to see the same growth as we saw with Poolman being our best D-man on some nights in the AHL.

Spacek is under rated so far. He is an offensive guy that is plugged into that 3 rd line supplemental scorer role on the Moose so his # s do not jump off the page. That is the same bottom 6 role he is chasing on the Jets. I expect to see him get s NHL taste this year as a injury call up.

Nikkanen can wait a while on this list. I know he was rated higher in the draft but fell due to injury issues. But bottom line is he should not jump the Q on this prospect list based on Wpg. Hfb members hope that we found a diamond in the ruff. He is a prospect 2-3 years away from joining the Moose. Let’s not rush and place him higher than he should be on our list based on hope. Let us hope he can prove it this year and be our biggest riser on next years list. I hope he can make his WJ team and have a really good showing against his peers and a strong showing in men’s Liga league.

Gawanke waited until his last junior year D+2 to breakout. This has me hesitant on his upside. I would hold off on rating him to high as well. I would rate Vallati higher than him.

Skylar McKenzie is small and I see him going the same route as Lodge, Kosmo-chuck,Gennaro and Stallard. Nothing to see here....move along.....move along.

Edit.....My next picks are....

9) Kovecevic
10) Chisholm
11) Spacek
12) Vallati
13) Luke Green
14) Gawanke
15) Lundmark
16) Nikkanen
17) Harkins
18 Blaisdell
19) Smith
20) Neaton..... Voodoo Goalie

Regarding comments above on Chisholm. Yes, more a PPG from a D-Man would be great but more emphasis should be applied to his Defensive development in: own-zone coverage, puck take-always, net front clearing ( of loose pucks and bodies), behind net and along the low boards play, strong on pucks and bodies, break out passes and/or carry-outs, blue-line reads and play break-ups.
How is he/has he been in these crucial X-Men traits?

 

[truck]

Regarding comments above on Chisholm. Yes, more a PPG from a D-Man would be great but more emphasis should be applied to his Defensive development in: own-zone coverage, puck take-always, net front clearing ( of loose pucks and bodies), behind net and along the low boards play, strong on pucks and bodies, break out passes and/or carry-outs, blue-line reads and play break-ups.
How is he/has he been in these crucial X-Men traits?

As a general rule, if a player is that far ahead on their reads and passing, they will put up points. Hockey sense and spacial awareness works across 200 feet.

 

[GumbyCan2]

Analysts that have developed and refined the NHLe factors have looked in some depth at those issues. They aren't perfect by any means, but my main point is that we too often dismiss D prospects in the NCAA based purely on their modest point production without taking into account the analyses that have shown how D have transitioned from that league to the NHL. Kovacevic and Samberg are two recent examples that I think are undervalued due to a casual view of their point production.

I hear a point to your statement there Whilee that reverberates league/level comparisons (adjustments). Far too often NCAA route Dmen don't get quite the same high ratings as other junior league players because their O-output totals look a little weak. NCAA & US University hockey leagues play less actual games and seldom are the D allocated wide open rushes and over-pinching, or O leaning tendencies. Those that get burned defensively which is shunned upon by many an NCAA coaching and programs , and then are set back somewhat. They emphasize the D structure, responsibility 1st and then let talent and ability rise to the occasion in game situation.