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The Canucks have a prospect excelling in almost every significant league

I was looking for an angle to write about the excellent progress of the Canucks’ prospects, as the good news at the NHL level is going to come in fits and starts, but it’s almost all good news in the prospect pool.
Daniel Wagner
Canucks Prospect Summer Showcase 2017

I was looking for an angle to write about the excellent progress of the Canucks’ prospects, as the good news at the NHL level is going to come in fits and starts, but it’s almost all good news in the prospect pool.

I couldn’t quite find the angle, however, until a Reddit thread on r/Canucks stated it plainly: the Canucks have a prospect excelling in almost every single significant feeder league for the NHL. So thank you, Sahil910: that’s exactly the angle I was looking for.

At the NHL level, the Canucks obviously have Brock Boeser, who it’s safe to say has graduated from prospect status. He leads the Canucks in scoring with 16 points in 16 games and leads all NHL rookies in points per game.

Beyond Boeser, however, the Canucks have at least one prospect excelling, if not dominating, in the NCAA, WHL, OHL, SHL, Allsvenskan, Liiga, AHL, and KHL. Heck, the Canucks even have a prospect in US High School hockey, the excellently-named Jack Rathbone, who is sure to dominate once his season starts at the end of this month.

There are really just two significant leagues unaccounted for, perhaps three depending on how you feel about Nikita Tryamkin, who was named the KHL’s defenceman of the month for October, being considered a Canucks prospect. The Canucks have just one prospect in the Czech Extraliga, Lukas Jasek. He hasn’t performed poorly, but also hasn’t excelled. As for the QMJHL, the Canucks’ lone prospects in that league, Dmitri Zhukenov and Guillaume Brisebois, have graduated to professional hockey.

Even still, the breadth of leagues covered by Canucks prospects seems unusual, or rather, the fact that they have prospects at or near the top of each league is unique.

Take, for instance, the Finnish Liiga. Several teams have prospects playing in the Finnish league, but no other team has two prospects at the top of the league to go with prospects at the top of almost every other league.

Petrus Palmu is currently 30th in Liiga scoring with 14 points in 22 games. When you restrict it to younger players, he lands a lot higher: there are seven players in the Finnish Liiga that are under-24 with more points than Palmu. Just one of them, Patrik Virta, is a prospect for another NHL team, but he’s over a year older than Palmu.

 

 


Meanwhile, Olli Juolevi is off to a strong start for TPS, the same team as Palmu, with 8 points in 10 games. That lands him second in points-per-game among under-20 players, behind just Miro Heiskanen, who the Dallas Stars selected with the third overall pick in the most recent draft.

 

 


Juolevi is averaging just over 18 minutes per game for TPS and has a solid 51.4% corsi. It’s nice to see the Canucks’ top defensive prospect finding his stride on home soil.

Moving east, we find the Canucks’ top overall prospect dominating the Swedish Hockey League. About a month ago, I wrote that reasonable expectations for Pettersson’s post-draft season would be around 25 points. He’s set to obliterate that number.

 

 


Pettersson already has 20 points in just 17 SHL games, good for fourth in the SHL in scoring. The next best under-20 players have 8 points, which, it should be noted, is still quite good! One of those players is draft-eligible defenceman and potential first overall pick Rasmus Dahlin.

He’s performing this well while averaging just 15:46 in ice time per game. A lot of points have come on the power play, where he’s second in the SHL with 11 points, but even still, his 9 even-strength points would still lead all under-20 players.

 

 


Pettersson isn’t even the only Swedish prospect dominating his league. Jonathan Dahlen is tearing up the Allsvenskan, to the point that it almost doesn’t seem fair.

Since getting sent back to Sweden, Dahlen has 8 goals and 14 points in 11 Allsvenskan games. His 1.27 points per game, leads the league, and he’s fifth in goalscoring even with his fewer games played than his contemporaries. At this point, he has to find a team to play for in the SHL just to make it fair for everyone else in the Allsvenskan.

The most encouraging thing about Dahlen’s performance is that he is proving he doesn’t need Pettersson to be successful. The two fed off each other last season, but they’re both equally as dominant without the other.

 

 


Heading to Canada, the Canucks have Michael DiPietro and Jonah Gadjovich excelling in the OHL and Kole Lind dominating the WHL.

Gadjovich has dealt with some injuries this season, but his 13 points in 11 games still lands him in the top-25 in OHL points per game. Moreover, his 8 goals in 11 games places him among the league’s elite: he’s seventh in the OHL in goals per game. He also leads the OHL in shots, averaging a crazy 5.64 shots per game.

 

 


DiPietro, meanwhile, has been arguably the best goaltender in the OHL. His .921 save percentage is third among OHL goaltenders and both goaltenders ahead of him are 20 years old and in their over-age season. What’s more, when you take into account the difficulty of the shots he’s faced, he stands head and shoulders above the competition, which is a little ironic given his stature.

DiPietro boasts the best save percentage in the OHL on high-danger shots, which gives him the league’s best adjusted goals saved above average according to prospect-stats.com. So far this season, DiPietro has saved the Windsor Spitfires 18.86 goals against above a league-average goaltender.

Both DiPietro and Gadjovich have a strong argument for making Team Canada’s World Junior team, but you could argue that no player has improved their stock more than Kole Lind.

Lind has been superb in the WHL with 11 goals and 32 points in 20 games. That places him 9th in WHL scoring. Lind fares even better if you just look at primary points: goals and first assists. He’s fourth in the WHL with 29 primary points, as just three of his assists are secondary assists. Lind is the prime driver of his team’s offence. The next best player on the Kelowna Rockets, Dillon Dube, has 17 primary points.

Lind was also a standout in the Canada-Russia Series, putting up three points for Team WHL in the first game of the series. If he keeps up this pace, it will be hard to justify leaving him off Team Canada.

 

 

Then there’s the AHL, where Nikolay Goldobin continues to showcase his elite offensive talent while rounding out his defensive game. Goldobin leads the Utica Comets in scoring with 14 points in 13 games, which also ties him for 22nd in the AHL in scoring.

Most importantly, he’s taking the steps defensively to be a reliable NHL player once he does get called up. Utica head coach Trent Cull even has him killing penalties.

 

 

 

Reid Boucher is also in the picture, with 12 points in 11 games. Most impressively, all but one of Boucher’s points have been primary points and he’s ninth in the AHL in primary points per game. He’s also in the top-10 in shots, averaging 3.64 per game.

That’s not to mention Thatcher Demko, whose .928 save percentage is fifth in the AHL, with the goaltenders ahead of him two to six years older than he is. Demko was named the AHL goaltender of the month for October after a hot start. He’s faltered slightly since, but is still a dominant goaltender at the AHL-level.

 

 


That leaves college hockey, where Adam Gaudette has been dominant for Northeastern University. The 21-year-old centre has 8 goals and 17 points in 10 games, which ties him for third in the NCAA. Gaudette has only been held off the scoresheet in two games this season and has seven multi-point games, including a hat trick.

 

 


Gaudette has been incredibly dangerous around the net, quickly turning rebounds and turnovers into goals with his quick hands and release. He needs to work on his faceoffs, he’s at 47.4% on the season, but every other part of his game looks NHL-ready.

Will Lockwood is also having a decent start to the season, if not as dominant as Gaudette. He has 9 points in 10 games, while averaging 3.40 shots per game.

 

 


I honestly don’t think any other NHL team can boast as many top prospects across so many leagues. Other teams might have a deeper system or have more blue-chip talent at the top of their pool, but how many other teams have players excelling in so many different leagues?