I'm surprised people are so completely rosy on Jensen's SEL season last year. I'm aware of Jensen's 17 goals and how they stack against other 19 y/o forward prospects. But is it really that wise to be completely ignoring the 6 piddly assists he managed in 50 games? I mean those are stay-at-home d-man type assist numbers. I know context matters, but really, that is inexcusable for a forward getting regular top six minutes and powerplay time.
To me right now it looks like this maybe should have been a red flag about Jensen's ability to co-exist in a team structured offense. I'm not pretending to have been able to predict this, just looking at it from a hindsight perspective. Who knows though at this point. Hopefully Jensen starts to heat up soon and all this discussion looks silly, but I'd be lying if I said I was optimistic.
I don't know if it's
that big of an issue in and of itself. Hornqvist had similar numbers (though not quite to the same degree) and he turned out OK. In fact, Hornqvist's career trajectory is one of the reasons why I'm not entirely pessimistic about Jensen right now:
Age 18-19: 5 goals, 7 pts in 47 SEL games
Age 19-20: 23 goals, 34 pts in 49 SEL games
Age 20-21: 18 goals, 30 pts in 53 SEL games
Only at age 21 did he get any AHL/NHL time at which point he put up pretty good AHL numbers:
Age 21-22: 59 pt pace in the AHL and 21 pt pace in the NHL
And since then he's been a pretty consistent 25 goal scorer in the NHL.
That's not to say Jensen will ever become Hornqvist (or even an NHLer), but I'm not too worried just yet given that he's only 20 years old still.