Circling back to the Jason Spezza trade for a moment: we never really got to touch on the big piece of the acquisition on the Ottawa side, winger Alex Chiasson.
Chiasson's season last year was sort of an enigma -- there's really no other way to describe it. He exploded early in the season, contracted some mysterious illness that forced weight loss (and perhaps depreciated performance) on him in the middle of the year, and saw a light rebound towards the end of the campaign. The guys at Defending Big D wrote this in a supplemental piece for
SSS. As always, I encourage you to read the entire thing.
It's tough to really gauge Chiasson's season overall because of his mysterious weight loss a few months into the year. However, even when Chiasson was putting up the points his possession was never that positive, mostly because of bad decisions and overall poor play in his defensive zone. Chiasson will attempt some interesting and ill-advised passes at times but at the same time -- I was always a fan of his boldness and creativity. It wasn't conducive to good possession numbers, however.
The last part is the tricky one. We talk quite a bit about tough it is for younger players to really drive play, and though Chiasson was 23-years of age last year, it was his first real crack at the NHL-level. He ended the year with thirteen goals and twenty-two assists in what was basically a full season of play, but as referenced earlier, his performance was very roller coaster-ish.
With a mysterious illness/injury somewhere in the middle of the year, it's hard to know if that -- in and of itself -- contributed to a weaker middle of the season, or if it was just predictable shooting percentage regression that caused people to look for justification as to why he was playing poorly. I think Relative Corsi% lends some credence to the theory that his game had diminished beyond just getting a bit unlucky, though -- you can actually see the mid-year dip.
So, if he was sick and it did effect his game, that mitigates a lot of the concern the team may have had when acquiring him.
Beyond the scope of that, I think the two questions you have to ask for any top-six forward or projected top-six forward falls into the following: (1) Can he drive play?; (2) Can he carry and sustain above-average shooting percentages? Elite players generally have both. Good/Very good players generally have one or the other. For obvious examples: Kyle Turris is a one. Bobby Ryan is a two.
I don't know that Chiasson can't be a one -- the numbers don't suggest it yet, but again, just one year of data. Working in his favor is that the guy is built like an absolute tank at 6'4, 200 lbs. So, he may not be the fleetest of foot, but he's not going to get banged around the ice very easily.
That brings us to the second -- can Chiasson post reliable shooting percentages, perhaps supplementing a possession-driving center like Mika Zibanejad? Same concerns apply with one year of data. Chiasson shot 9.0% last year, which is actually a cut below the league average for forwards.
It's going to be really interesting to see how he shakes out. You saw bursts of brilliance last year from the kid, and you saw a lot of nothing (that probably coincided with general regression and that tricky illness) for a stretch of games, too. His rookie year was probably a success no matter how you cut it, but I always wonder about the ceilings for guys who are cracking the league at 22+ years of age. It's the million dollar question that hockey operations guys really have trouble answering: how high can development carry a non blue-chip prospect as he enters his playing prime?
I think you have an obvious NHL'er in Chiasson -- the key for Paul MacLean now is finding the right fit with respect to linemates.
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