NHL Equivalencies for Junior prospects of 2009-10

Finally, here are the NHL Equivalencies and other statistics for this years' junior prospects. NHLE is the projection of the point-per-game that the player would post at the NHL level, and /82 is simply the number of points they're projected to score per 82 games. Basically, they tell us what amount of point production we can reasonably expect from these players next season, but it should be understood that these projections won't always closely match their actual output.

Statistics for '10 Leafs junior prospects, click to view at full-size:

OHL - Kadri, Mitchell, Ryan, Blacker, Devane, Smith
QMJHL - DiDomenico, Champagne, Stefanovich, Paradis
USHL- Knodel

Nazem Kadri, widely considered to be the Leafs top offensive prospect, is projected to score at nearly half of a point-per-game pace for 39 points over a full 82-game schedule.

Right-winger Dale Mitchell (along with teammate and fellow Leaf prospect Kenny Ryan) contributed to the Windsor Spitfires 2nd consecutive Memorial Cup victory. He should stick with the Toronto Marlies for this upcoming season. BTW, note that the NHL Equivalencies for overage juniors are nicked down further than the 18 and 19 year olds (see this chart, which you can find within Gabriel Desjardins' series of articles on NHLEs at BtN).

DiDomenico played too few games for us to get a real solid read on him, as he spent most of the year rehabilitating his injured leg (he suffered a broken femur in a 2009 playoff game). However, after scoring 22 points in 12 regular season games upon his return to action, he continued to tear it up in the playoffs as he scored 21 points in 14 playoff games.

Champagne looks like a guy with potential to become a respectable 3rd-line checking centre, but the Leafs passed on signing him (for reasons mostly unknown to the public), and so he is eligible to be selected again in the entry draft. Reports are that he is a poor skater at the junior level, but otherwise I couldn't guess at why the Leafs have passed on him nor can I say if they made the right decision or not.

Phillipe Paradis was selected at #27 overall by the Carolina Hurricanes in last year's draft and subsequently traded to Toronto for Jiri Tlusty. Paradis is reputedly a tenacious checker with lower offensive upside than Tlusty, which is why some people aren't fond of the deal, but the former Leaf prospect and 1st round pick hasn't yet lived up to his offensive projections at the NHL level. Tlusty was projected to score at a 0.49 point-per-game pace this season, based on his production in the AHL last year, yet he merely scored 6 points in 20 games and his Pt/GP pace at the AHL dropped off from last year's. Management simply feels that Paradis has a better shot of becoming a future bottom-six forward for the team than Tlusty did of becoming a top-six forward (top-six being defined as mostly skilled/scoring forwards, and the bottom-six being made up of grinders/defensive forwards).

Eric Knodel, at 6 ft. 6 in. and 225 pounds, was the biggest prospect in the Leafs system in 2009-10. The US-born defenceman will play NCAA hockey at the University of New Hampshire next season.

The QMJHL is the only one of the three Canadian major junior leagues to publish shots on goal and faceoff data, but I had to go through the game-by-game logs to count up the Power-Play Assists produced by each Quebec league player.

Supplemental Statistics

	Shooting			Power-Play			Faceoffs
Player	SOG	S%	S/GP	G	A	P	FO	W%	FO/GP
Kadri	-	-	-	11	24	35	-	-	-
DiDomenico	27	25.9	2.3	1	6	7	20	25.0	1.7
Champagne	212	17.9	3.3	15	15	30	1579	58.5	24.3
Mitchell	-	-	-	4	11	15	-	-	-
Stefanovich	174	14.4	3.3	8	16	24	194	49.0	3.7
Paradis	176	13.6	2.8	9	11	20	48	47.9	0.8
Ryan	-	-	-	3	2	5	-	-	-
Blacker	-	-	-	4	12	16	-	-	-
Knodel	91	3.3	1.8	3	10	13	-	-	-
Devane	-	-	-	0	1	1	-	-	-
Smith	-	-	-	0	0	0	-	-	-

Note that Mikhail Stefanovich's shooting percentage this past season was a hefty drop from the 23.6 % rate from the year before (when he scored 49 goals), but virtually identical to the 14.7 % posted in his first major junior season. And that Chris DiDomenico took very few draws. He'd been terrible in the faceoff circle throughout his junior career; his lifetime faceoff winning percentage in the Q is 42 %. Perhaps he'll move permanently to the wing upon joining the pro ranks?