wolanin has already shown that he skates and carries the puck better than wideman ever did at the nhl level. some of the games he played when chabot was out near the end of the year were insane. the he was a big part of bellville's huge february and most people watching the games would say he looked too good for that league. there is a lot of projecting and guesswork when signing a relatively unproven player to a longer term deal and i'm very, VERY confident that gambling on wolanin will pay off. he'll be our second best defenseman next season unless brannstrom explodes into the league and plays like a legit #2 and it won't be just because our defense sucks. the guy has a big shot, big frame, great skating, good passing, good vision and a lot of confidence.
if you don't want to take into account my scouting ability (i do like to think i don't have a terrible track record, but i'm definitely not even close to perfect) wolanin scored at a 0.4 point a game pace in the nhl as a 23 year old (turned 24 in mid march) with 12 points in 30 games in his first nhl season. wideman debuted as a 25 year old and put up 13 in 64 for a 0.2 ppg pace. he then went on to score 17 in 76 (0.22), 8 in 16 (0.5), and 7 in 25 (0.28). in wideman's rookie ahl season (22/23 years old, birthday is jan 7th), he scored 18 in 60 games, granted this was on a much lower scoring team than wolanin played on this season, so let's look at wideman's next season to get them closer in age and team quality. in wideman's second season, he scored 51 in 73 games for a ppg of ~0.7. he was 4th in team scoring, but 6th if we take pace into account (pageau and stone finished with fewer points and games played due to callups, but had higher ppg). wolanin scored 31 in 40 games for a ppg of 0.755. if we look at pace, wolanin finishes 5th in team scoring. the sample size on wolanin's season is much smaller, but the eye test shows that he was a leader on that team on the ice and a monster with the puck on his stick.
i'm excited about wolanin. i think he'll be a top 4 guy next season and a top three caliber defenseman if he can round out his defensive game. he has a ton of tools and i can't wait to see if he can put a complete game together. wideman doesn't have to tools wolanin does, wolanin's stats look better at the same ages/leagues, and wolanin looks better to the eye test.