Time to check in the Rangers WHL Prospects

Photo: FutureConsiderations.ca

As I have been dabbling with stats and prospects more frequently than in recent years, as well as have been getting more adept at using the program Tableau to make visuals, I began to think of more ways to bring information to the fans around the world. We all know that the Canadian Junior Hockey Leagues are a major factory when it comes to developing prospects for NHL teams. That said its hard for a lot of people to watch the games because they aren’t readily available for most fans; but people want to see how their prospects are doing. I have been developing a nice little visual that can help fans see how a prospect has been doing over the course of his career in Juniors.

In this tool their are a few charts.

1. I plotted the players G/gm and A/Gm over the course of his career to see how that has been doing over time. On the graph you will see the players’ name, points per game and games played in the season.
2. In the second chart it’ll still show the players name and P/gm but this will plot it against the Quality of his Teammates vs the Quality of his Competition. The better his teammates are the higher his QoT is and the better his competition is the higher is QoC is. You would like a player to continue to produce but at times if the quality of his teammates are low but we don’t have this stat available it may be alarming to see a player not score as many points. The Vice-Versa is also true so I think this is a nice little visual to just keep things in perspective.
3. The last chart is just a good old stats chart with a players name, age, games played, goals, primary assists (A1) secondary assists (A2) and points.

So lets look at some prospects

Brad Morrison was one of my favorite picks in this draft. The sneaky and offensively gifted center that plays with an edge is a nice depth addition to the pool of prospects. As we can see with this graph, Morrison is becoming more of a goal scorer early in the season and putting up points at the same clip as last season, despite playing with a lesser quality of teammates. He is trending nicely for a mid round pick and hopefully he can turn it up a little more as the season progresses.

Sergey Zborvskiy was drafted pretty early by the Rangers compared to his draft ranking. Some were a little upset by, it including myself, but it was probably a knee jerk reaction. All in all, Zborvskiy was getting used to the North American ice last season and as the middle of the season came around he was seen as a pretty fast riser for the draft. The Rangers obviously thought he was worth drafting early. Mobile 6’4 right handed defenseman who play with an edge are relatively rare. His coaching staff likes him so much that he is wearing the ‘A’ in just his second North American season and his improvement thus far is astounding. From the graph, he took a massive leap offensively early, already matching his goal total from last year. With the coaching staff clearly liking him so much, I wouldn’t be surprised if he keeps on improving and becoming a nice mid round steal like Ryan Graves. Zborovskiy is playing with lower quality teammates against higher quality opponents and still taking that massive leap. That is awesome news, even if it is early. If he can keep this up then I would be very excited.

Keegan Iverson was picked to be a bruising tough powerforward. I love the attempt but he isn’t exactly playing too well. That said, last season he was plastered on the third line on the Portland Winterhawks. Hopefully for the Rangers sake he becomes at least a quality bottom-six forward. A Milan Lucic would be nice but he has to show that he can score in juniors before we expect him to score 25 in the NHL.

Iverson appears to be a bit of a long shot to make an impact at this point, but the selections of Morrison and Zborvskiy appear to have some serious potential. Considering the prospect pool was relatively depleted before the 2015 draft, Gordie and company did a good job restocking.