Zaddy
Registered User
- Feb 8, 2013
- 13,058
- 5,850
I'll laugh when it comes out that Zegras never would have signed with a Canadian team, and all of this hand-wringing was for naught.
I mean he was a one and done in college so there's no way he would've stayed all 4 years and not sign. However somewhere down the line it's possible that he would've wanted to go back to the east coast but you'd likely have him for 7 years or something at least.
Year vs year is hard to judge, for example there's a huge difference in Covid Sweden vs normal Sweden. Heck Canada's team had a majority of players who had hardly played. I agree Zegras' better totals should be considered in comparison, and I would also call a guy like Mittlestat a bit of an outlier, but playing as the top dog on a top team has advantages that can inflate a players value. Some teams don't tend to be as top heavy and as such we've seen lesser players in primary roles outscore players more talented who had more support. That's why McDavid had 3 goals and 9 points, he was featured less, on another team with less depth he most certainly scores more. Also I hate to bring it up but Puljujarvi also had 17 points and lead the tournament in scoring, 6 more than Matthews and Tkachuk, 11 more than Marner. He even had 3 more than Aho and 4 more than Laine his linemates. Blah Blah Blah, the point is it's a short tournament with extenuating factors and doing well here is far from a predictor of NHL success. This was in particular a weird year, lets not read too much into it. Great for Zegras but that wasn't the NHL and guys like Mittlestat have proven that.
What makes Zegras performance impressive is that he didn't have a high-scoring player on his line, or on his team. The guy led his team in scoring by 10 (ten!!!) points in a 7 game tournament. That's insane. When Pulju had 17 points you had Aho with 14 and Laine with 13 that was on the same line as him. So there's a tremendous difference there.
And I don't know why people keep bringing up Mittelstadt? Was he even that good in that tournament? He had 11 points in 7 games, good but not amazing, and less amazing still is that he only led his team in scoring by 1 point. Bellows had 10, Tkachuk 9. So again a huge difference.
Anyway, I do think it'll definitely be a bit rough of a transition to the NHL for Zegras. The physicality is something he's not used to and that he'll have to learn to handle and find a way around. So I don't expect him to go in and dominate right away, it'll take some time but with his skill (and confidence) I will be shocked if he's not a top line forward in the future.