The Kings have been shuffling prospects in and out of Manchester. Who has emerged from the rubble?
Also, Dean Lombardi strategy of using a lot of picks on older NCAA players is starting to pay dividends.
What is NHLe?
Through the efforts of hockey analytics dudes Gabe Desjardins & Rob Vollman (among others) we are able to approximate a prospect’s NHL equivalent point totals. Each league has different equivalency numbers which you can adjust according to a players age. Obviously, NHLe has it’s limitations, but it is a useful way to do a quick & dirty analysis. It is basically just a way to put all prospects spread out in various leagues on the same playing field so that you can compare them against one another. If you have any questions about the process, fire away in the comments.
- Tyler Toffoli is still on top. He actually improved on his numbers in his short trip back to Manchester. He is still by far the Kings’ top prospect and as we wrote recently, deserves to be a regular in the Kings line-up.
- Toffoli was one of the few Kings prospects who was able to pump up his numbers a little. The vast majority of the Kings prospects saw their point production dip a little over the last couple months.
- One prospect who has soared up the chart is 20 year-old Jonny Brodzinski. Brodzinski has 13 points in his last ten games, including a goal in Saturday’s North Star College Cup Final where he faced his younger brother Michael and fellow Kings’ prospect Hudson Fasching.
- 23 year-old Nic Dowd, Brodzinski’s teammate at St. Cloud State, is another college prospect who’s doing very well. He has 11 points in his last ten and is now all the way up to the 8th spot in our chart. Dowd is a senior and having his most productive season. Hopefully, he can continue to develop next season with the Monarchs. He didn’t make our Top 25 Under 25 last year, but is definitely on our radar now.
- Tanner Pearson has played very well in Manchester since being sent back down. He has 15 points in the 18 games he’s played since being sent down (the first time). Here he is scoring a goal Saturday night in a glorious BK uniform (:45 sec mark):
- Brandon Kozun is no longer on this chart since he was dealt to Toronto recently. His numbers really took a nose dive over the last few months which is what may have spurned the move. In our last Prospect update in November, Kozun was 6th in scoring among prospects. If he were still on the chart today, he would have fallen all the way down to 14th. His replacement on the Monarchs, Andrew Crescenzi, brings up the rear among all prospects in the organization. Nowhere to go but up?
- The main beneficiary of Toffoli’s call-up and Kozun’s trade has to be Monarchs winger Brian O’Neill. O’Neill was signed after a very productive Senior season at Yale where he logged 46 points in 35 games in ’11-12. He’s struggled to get ice time and hasn’t matched that productivity in Manchester, but now he’s been given an opportunity and it looks like he’s making the most of it. He has 12 points in his last 18 games and has now cracked the top 10 in organizational scoring.
- JF Berube’s save percentage has dipped since being given the starting job in Manchester. He is 17-12-2 with a .913 sv% and a 2.47 GAA.
- Patrik Bartosak, on the other hand, has gotten on track after a slow start for the Red Deer Rebels. His save percentage has jumped from .916 to .925 and is 24-17-2 on the year.
Goaltending
