Expectations on Offense – Follow Up

By Bob Trask – On September 21st I posted my expectations for offensive production from various players and compared it to the projections made by Scott Cullen. We were close on a few and differed by a fair amount on others. I then averaged our two expectations to come up with a final number. It was not an all-inclusive list because some players were expected to be traded, others were not expected to make the squad and there were a couple of late additions to the season opening roster.

With the Canadiens now having played more than one-quarter of their schedule, now might be a good time to look at the report card of various players – strictly from an offensive production point of view. For the sake of simplicity, I simply going to multiply the current production of each player by 4x except in the case of Mike Matheson who should see a lot more action in the remaining 60 games.

Because I had expected Mike Hoffman to be traded I had not prepared any expectations for him. My mistake! The list is also incomplete because Guhle, Xhekaj, Savard, Harris, Edmundson, Kovacevic, Monahan, Armia and Pezzetta were not included in he original article so no comparison can be made with them either.

Nick SuzukiGAPts
Expectations234467
Projection484896
Cole CaufieldGAPts
Expectations312455
Projection483684
Evgenii DadonovGAPts
Expectations232548
Projection448
Jonathan DrouinGAPts
Expectations113142
Projection01616
Christian DvorakGAPts
Expectations182543
Projection162036
Kirby DachGAPts
Expectations132740
Projection165268
Josh AndersonGAPts
Expectations191433
Projection20828
Brendan GallagherGAPts
Expectations181836
Projection122032
Juraj SlafkovskyGAPts
Expectations181836
Projection12820
Rem PitlickGAPts
Expectations111829
Projection000
Mike MathesonGAPts
Expectations91827
Projection131326
Chris WidemanGAPts
Expectations72027
Projection01616
Jake EvansGAPts
Expectations91524
Projection088
Mike HoffmanGAPts
Projection201232

Suzuki, Caufield and Dach have all exceeded expectations among forwards, while Dvorak, Gallagher and Anderson have come close to meeting expectations for production. I give Slafkovsky a pass because of his limited usage but the remainder of the forwards on this list have disappointed. Among the three forwards not on the original list, only Sean Monahan has been productive offensively. Hoffman was beginning to contribute before his injury and it obvious the team misses him.

It is harder to compare the expectations of the defensemen with their projected production because the entire corps, and its usage is far different that what was anticipated when training camp started

Take a look and assign your own grades to each player.

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