Dobbers has a thing on their Dobbers prospects page called the PNHLe where they use some formula based on age, league, production, position and some other crap and then the formula predicts what the player will be in the NHL..based on a 0-90 grading system where 90 is Superstar potential at the top while 65 and above is 1st line potential and 2nd liner starts around the 40 mark.
I get that there is no way to predict something like this accurately. Just a way to see what others think of our prospects.
As you can guess, we don't have many forwards who even have reached the 2nd line potential mark. Only 4. And only 1 of those who are above 1st line though it may surprise you slightly (or perhaps not) who it is.
They recently did their periodic update on Valtteri Puustinen and his PNHLe score is the highest of our prospects.
Much,
MUCH higher. In fact, it's the highest mark any of our forward prospects have hit since I have seen it. Last year Poulin hit 75, the exact middle between 1st line and superstar. The Puusti's new score is now an 81 out of 90. Closer to superstar than 1st line.
The other 2 Pen forwards who were above the 2nd line potential mark are Drew O'Connor who just made it with a score of 43 and the recently acquired Jonathan Gruden who came in 1 point above The D.O.C. with a score of 44. Poulin currently sits in between 1st and 2nd line with a score of 55...dunno why he dropped 20 points from last year but whatever. Just thought it was cool how Puusty really started to come into his own last year and seems to really be owning that recognition, playing with confidence and not stepping back sophomore slump style but playing even better early on.
And again, these formulas and systems mean nothing in terms of crystal ball, Nostradamus future accuracy but they're a good barometer for reading where a current prospect possibly has the potential to reach. It's not like you can ask for a better trajectory for a 7th round pick a year after he was drafted. Especially when he was drafted many probably expected around what Airola has done (or maybe I should say what Airola hasn't done, for those of us more pessimistic, A-hole, sarcastic fans).
Interestingly enough, a guy who I was stoked when they signed (and who I like even more since) was the only D-Man to reach a 2nd line score. Cam Lee scored exactly 40 on the PNHLe which other than Marino (whm I don't consider to be a prospect any longer) is our highest ranked defense on that chart.
Edit- One other cool aspect about Puusti is his meteoric rise since being drafted based on this one PNHLe formula. A few months post draft he received his first score and it was a score of 20. About 7 months later his score jumped up to 47. And only a little over a year since first scoring a 20, his score is 81. A 61 point jump in a little more than a year. I haven't seen another player with such a massive rise in that amount of time... come to think of it, in ANY amount of time. Not saying that he is one of the best, but it certainly shows how he's announced himself in the prospect world with a sudden, massive impact.
The Puusti:
Valtteri Puustinen – DobberProspects