Expectations on Offense: A Comparative

By Bob Trask – In early August, I published some optimistic predictions for the production of various Canadiens players in the upcoming season. Today, Scott Cullen published a far more comprehensive list of projections that covered over 400 players across the entire NHL. You can review his entire list here.

It is interesting to compare the projections to see where we were close and where we diverged. My list of 22 players did not include Mike Hoffman, who I believe could be traded before the season starts. Cullen’s list of 15 Canadiens’ players did include Hoffman. My list was prepared before the Sean Monahan acquisition, leaving only 13 players to compare.

While my projections were limited to goals scored, Cullen also estimated the number of games played by each player. If I were to update my list, my expectations for games played by various players would vary from the first list simply because of Monahan’s presence on the team. That would, in turn, affect my projections for production. Still, it makes for interesting comparisons.

The Comparisons

In the following comparisons, my projections will be on the first line of the table and Cullen’s will be on the second line of the table. An average of the two will be on the third line.

Nick Suzuki

	G	A	PTS
Bob	24	46	70
Scott Cullen	22	42	64
Average	23	44	67

Cole Caufield

	G	A	PTS
Bob	34	26	60
Scott Cullen	28	23	51
Average	31	24	55

Evgenii Dadonov

	G	A	PTS
Bob	26	30	56
Scott Cullen	21	19	40
Average	23	25	48

Jonathan Drouin

	G	A	PTS
Bob	15	35	50
Scott Cullen	8	27	35
Average	11	31	42

Christian Dvorak

	G	A	PTS
Bob	21	27	48
Scott Cullen	16	22	38
Average	18	25	43

Kirby Dach

	G	A	PTS
Bob	15	29	44
Scott Cullen	12	24	36
Average	13	27	40

Josh Anderson

	G	A	PTS
Bob	21	15	36
Scott Cullen	18	12	30
Average	19	14	33

Brendan Gallagher

	G	A	PTS
Bob	18	17	35
Scott Cullen	18	19	37
Average	18	18	36

Juraj Slafkovsky

	G	A	PTS
Bob	16	18	34
Scott Cullen	20	19	39
Average	18	18	36

Rem Pitlick

	G	A	PTS
Bob	12	19	31
Scott Cullen	10	17	27
Average	11	18	29

Mike Matheson

	G	A	PTS
Bob	10	18	28
Scott Cullen	9	18	27
Average	9	18	27

Chris Wideman

	G	A	PTS
Bob	7	18	25
Scott Cullen	8	21	29
Average	7	20	27

Jake Evans

	G	A	PTS
Bob	10	15	25
Scott Cullen	9	15	24
Average	9	15	24

Comments

Many of the projections were very close, the main exception being Jonathan Drouin. Part of that may be attributed to my expectation that Drouin could thrive under head coach Martin St Louis and part of it may be attributed to my expectation that Mike Hoffman could be traded with Drouin picking up some of Hoffman’s ice time.

The cut-off to make the top 400 projected scorers on Scott Cullen’s list was 24 points. Canadiens’ players who did not reach that threshold included forwards Joel Armia, Michael Pezzetta and Jesse Ylönen. Defensemen failing to reach the cut-off of 24 points included Joel Edmundson, David Savard, Justin Barron, Jordan Harris and Corey Schueneman. You can see my projections for those players in my article “Room for Optimism on Offense”.

It will be an interesting exercise for me to review how close I came with some of my projections and how far I missed by on others. In any case, I have set my own benchmarks for performance expectations. Have you set yours?

PS – For those who still hang onto every point that Jesperi Kotkaniemi puts up, Cullen projects that he will put 31 points on 12 goals and 19 assists – slightly lower than his projected output for Kirby Dach. *wink*

More reading…