Oiler NCAA Prospects and Competition – Part 2

This is a two-part post looking at Oiler NCAA prospects through the lens of Ryan Stimson’s new Quality of Competition and Quality of Teammate metrics. Part One looked at recent Oiler NCAA signings. Part Two looks at Oiler draft picks currently in the NCAA.

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New Data

Ryan Stimson (@RK_Stimp) recently developed a way to track the quality of competition and quality of teammates at the NCAA level. Please click through to the link above for more information about the metrics. Ryan does a great job of explaining it. (Also, this whole post is just using his data, so please click the link.) I’ll just cut to the chase here and say that we now have three new pieces of information that weren’t immediately accessible before for NCAA players:

• Estimated Time On Ice (all situations)
• Quality of Competition (separated by forward and defence)
• Quality of Teammates (separated by forward and defence)

Within the article, Ryan has a link to two visualiations in Tableau – one for competition and one for teammates. Using them, you can find this information for any player who was in the NCAA last season. I took the liberty of pulling the data for all the Oiler relevant players and present them here.

Here’s how to read the visualizations below. The first graph (QoC) is for quality of competition. The closer you are to the top of the graph, the harder the defensive competition you face. The farther to the right you go, the harder the forward competition. So the hardest competition is the top-right, while the easiest is the bottom-left. For most teams, there seems to be a much greater gap in forward competition than defensive competition. The second graph (QoT) follows the same format but with the quality of teammates the prospect played with. I’ve inserted an arrow to highlight the prospect in question. Click the image to make it larger and easier to read.

Forward Prospects

Aidan Muir

Aidan Muir was drafted in 2013 by Craig McTavish in the 4^th round. He has good size at 6’4”, 212 lbs and is listed as a left winger despite shooting right. He’s an August birthday, so reasonably young for his draft year, and had to play a year in the USHL before going to Western Michigan at the age of 19. In his first year, he managed 0.42 points / game, which isn’t bad for a freshman actually.

Unfortunately, this last year he took a step back offensively. His point totals were almost cut in half, down to 0.23 points / game, equalling only 8 points on the year. Worse, this is despite getting some powerplay time as 3 of his points came on the PP. In his defence, he shot a poor 2.7% this year compared to 8.5% last year. He actually got more shots per game, despite his poor point totals. Can his usage that can shed light on this poor year?

Muir played about 16 and a half minutes a night, which is on the upper end of middle 6 territory. Likewise, he played middle tier competition with middle tier teammates. You would’ve hoped his usage had been a bit more severe given his poor offensive output. In fairness to Muir, he’s not getting sheltered and is playing about where you’d expect a sophomore to play. He also has size, which you can’t teach.

What This Means: If Muir is going to earn a contract he’ll certainly have to step up his offensive production. He’s not getting the soft parade, but he’s not getting the extreme usage that would justify his low point totals. His shooting percentage will likely be better next year, but it’ll take more than that to improve his prospect status.

Evan Campbell

Campbell was also picked in the 2013 draft, in the round after Muir. At 6’1”, 195 lbs, he’s not as large as his draftmate. He’s also considerably older, drafted as a 20 year old overager heading immediately to the NCAA and just finished his Junior season.

Campbell has taken an interesting path through his NCAA career. Despite being listed as a left wing, he took 219 faceoffs in his freshman year, good for 6^th on the team, indicating he had some spot duty at centre. In his sophomore year, his offence spiked from 0.33 points/game to 0.79 points/game. It wasn’t all powerplay points either as his even-strength scoring doubled and his shooting percentage actually dropped from 15.3% to 13.0%. Interestingly, he led the team in faceoffs taken, hinting that he may have been a full-time centre that year.

Unfortunately, Campbell’s stock came crashing down this year. His point totals dropped to 0.43 points/game. He still appears to be playing centre, but now at the 3^rd most faceoffs, he either lost playing time or spent more time on the wing. His shooting percentage also dropped to 6.8%.

It seems quite clear the Campbell dropped down the depth chart this year. His estimated time on ice was just over 8 minutes a game. He’s playing with weaker teammates against softer competition. The Oiler Rig’s Alex Thomas indicated that he wasn’t playing in the Hockey East tournament late in the year. I’m not sure if that was injury or healthy scratch, but this has been a disappointing year to say the least.

What This Means: Campbell had a disappointing year after making some strides in his sophomore season. He’s playing down the depth chart and it reflects in his points total. The fact that he’s an older prospect, at 23 years old already, doesn’t help his case. He’s going to need to bounce back to his previous form and beyond to have any hope of scoring a contract after his senior year next season.

Tyler Vesel

Now we move into the 2014 draft and 6^th round choice Tyler Vesel. Another 20 year old draftee, Vesel is a bit undersized at 5’11”, 182 lbs.

The more I look at Vesel, the more I find him an intriguing prospect. Listed as a right shot “forward” on hockeydb, he actually led his team in faceoffs as a freshman, so he likely played centre. He also led all forward in blocks… by a lot. He had 72 blocks compared to the second place forward at 24! Either he’s playing time as a defenceman or he’s getting some steady PK minutes. He also managed 0.59 points per game, good for 4^th on the team.

As a sophomore, Vesel’s scoring ran in place. He dropped to 0.51 points per game and fully half of those came on the powerplay, so he didn’t get a ton of even-strength points. However, he continued to take a lot of faceoffs (52% on the dot) and again led all forwards in blocks. So how is he being used?

Interesting! Unlike Campbell and Muir, Vesel is playing against top competition forwards with 2^nd tier teammates. At an estimated 15 and a half minutes a night, Vesel isn’t playing 1^st line minutes, but he’s getting solid ice time.

What This Means: Vesel was billed a scorer when he was drafted, but the evidence suggests something that wasn’t immediately apparent. He appears to be a tough-minutes centre, getting some PP time but might also playing the PK. Despite being smaller, he blocks a ton of shots and can chip in a bit of offence while he’s at it. Now, he is an older prospect (22 this year) and he will need to increase his scoring a little, but the Oilers might have a player here. He’s got two more years to develop before potentially going pro as a two-way centre.

Defencemen

William Lagesson

Along with Vesel, Lagesson was drafted in the 2014 draft but in the 4th round. A left shooting Swedish defender, Lagesson made the jump to the USHL after his draft year, picking up 16 points in 52 games. Described as being a gritty, in-your-face defender, Lagesson has reasonable size at 6’2”, 194 lbs. He has now completed his freshman year at Massachusetts. Though he only had 0.26 points / game, that was actually second among defencemen behind Ben Gallacher (0.29 p/g). He also got one point each on the PP and PK, so he got least some time on both special teams. His shots per game were also second among D, so Lagesson was not completely uninvolved in the offensive zone for a guy with a defensive first reputation.

Lagesson kind of stands out there doesn’t he? Clearly playing top competition with the top teammates is not a bad spot for a freshman. He averaged about 16 and a half minutes a game, so was clearly a second pairing defencemen in terms of TOI.

What This Means: Given his usage, Lagesson had a solid year at Massachusetts. Facing top competition as a freshman is about the most you can ask for a more defensive-minded defenceman and Lagesson was not completely absent at the offensive side of the rink either. There’s a long road ahead, but the early miles are positive for the Swede.

Vincent Desharnais

Perhaps one of the more curious selections we’re looking at today, Desharnais was selected in the 7^th round in this most recent draft. A 20 year old right-shot defenceman who just completed his first year at Providence, Desharnais is possibly best described as a Tall Tree Who Can’t Score. At 6’6”, 207 lbs, he’s certainly a large man and with 2 points in 19 games and a +1, the lamp isn’t lighting at either end. He also only had 8 penalty minutes, so he’s not being penalized for some excessively rough play. This year isn’t an anomaly either. In his overage year in the BCHL, he only managed 5 points in 54 games during the regular season and a fairly modest 52 penalty minutes, though he did spike for 8 points in 12 games in the playoffs.

Well it sure looks like Desharnais is playing some incredibly tough competition with weaker forward teammates! However, the real story here is his estimated time on ice being less than 6 minutes a game! Now, that can’t be right. I suspect there’s a sample size issue here. Desharnais only played 19 games and if they were low-event enough, it may skew the estimated numbers somewhat. I can’t imagine a defender playing 6 minutes a game while not racking up penalty minutes.

What This Means: Regardless of the absolute accuracy, we can be fairly confident that Desharnais didn’t play much last year as an older freshman. He may have played tough competition when he did play, but that doesn’t really mean much if your coach hardly puts you out there at all. Clearly it’s early days for the big man, but he’s coming from a long ways back if he’s going to make strides over the next three years.

Summary

The Oiler draft picks in the NCAA are an interesting mixed bag. Campbell and Muir are 2013 draft picks who had down arrows this last year. Vesel, on the surface, appeared to run in place but the tough competition he faced may explain some of that. Lagesson had a solid freshman year playing defence for Massachusetts while Desharnais is a tall man without a lot of TOI to warrant a draft pick on.

I hope Ryan Stimson updates these graphs annually because it would be fun to track these same prospects into the future and have them joined by new Oiler prospects like Marino and Cairns next year.

I also need to give credit to collegehockeyinc.com for all the stats referenced in this article and hockeydb.com for all the heights, weights, handedness and non-NCAA stats.