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Zach Werenski and Managing Expectations

September 16, 2016, 11:59 AM ET [9 Comments]
Paul Berthelot
Columbus Blue Jackets Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Traverse City Prospect Tournament gets underway today. Zach Werenski will be participating and he will easily be the Jackets best defencemen, if not their best skater. He’s dominated this age level whether it be at Michigan or the World Juniors. He’s also succeeded against older players with his unmatched production in the Calder Cup playoffs.

The Blue Jackets appear ready for him to break camp with the team, buying out Fedor Tyutin, opening up a spot for the top prospect. Expectations are going to be sky-high, just as they were and still are for Ryan Murray. Murray has taken some heat from fans because he hasn’t lived up to the lofty expectations placed upon him. The goal of this post is look at what we can realistically expect from Werenski, hopefully avoiding overhyping yet another prospect.

The transition for defencemen to the NHL is much steeper than forwards. That is because it is very difficult to hide a young defencemen. With forwards you can put them lower in the line-up and give them veteran line-mates as support. With defencemen since there are only two on the ice at a time, it’s much more difficult for your partner to cover up for you if you make a mistake. Defencemen also have to deal with opposing coaches who will try and take advantage of their inexperience by line-matching.

To get a baseline for Werenski, all rookie defencemen who played at least 40 games in their first NHL season since the 04-05 lockout were looked at. This data was gathered using Hockey-References great tool the Play Index. The reason the cut-off was set at 40 was because the goal of this is look at players who were at least semi-regulars. Werenski shouldn’t be bouncing up and down between the NHL and AHL this year so it’s best to exclude players who did from this analysis. There were 189 players who met the 40 game criteria. They ranged from Dion Phaneuf who had 49 points to Keith Aulie who had two points. Averaging all the players gives us this:



This is what the average rookie defencemen has done entering the league. It includes your shutdown defencemen and those who aren’t counted on for offense. Considering Werenski’s talent and draft pedigree this should be considered the low end of what to project from him. To get a better idea of what to expect from Werenski, just looking at first round picks should give us a better benchmark. These would be the players who closely match Werenski’s skill set as most defencemen taken in the first round are expected to be strong offensive contributors. This lowered the list down to 55 players. Here is how they performed on average:



These players performed a little better than the previous ones. This was to be expected as first round picks tend to be more talented and end up as better NHL players. They enter the league at a much younger age, almost two full years younger than the first group. They tend to play a few more games but that is likely more so due to coaches/GM bias than anything else. Coaches are more likely to keep a first round pick in the line-up and let him work through his struggles than a player picked lower.

This does a good job but we have to consider how young Werenski is. Of the 55 players, 33 were 20 or older. They would be a little more mature and followed a more traditional NHL development path. It’s very rare to see a teenager in the NHL, especially on defence. Filtering the list to just teenagers gives us 24 players (the 22 first round picks from before and two second rounders). These players were the cream of the prospect crop. Most were top 10 picks, and many have gone on to become franchise cornerstones for their teams.



These players as expected performed the best. You have be a special player to break into the NHL at 18 or 19. At the top end, we have players like Tyler Myers, Cam Fowler, Aaron Ekblad, Michael Del Zotto and Erik Johnson. They were the five players to score over 30 points; they represent the best case scenario for Werenski. At the low end we have Nikita Zadorov, Luke Schenn, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jonas Brodin and Nick Leddy. They were the five lowest scoring players, all scoring 15 or fewer. They of course represent the worst case scenario.

Taking this all in gives a good range of what to expect from Werenski for this season. Anywhere from 17-25 points would represent a very good season for the young defencemen. If he gets some shooting luck and power play time he could potentially push that up to around 29-30 points. If Werenski struggles adjusting to the NHL or perhaps has some poor shooting luck he could easily fall below our expected range. If that does happen it is not the end of the world. Players like Nick Leddy and Oliver Ekman-Larsson struggled their first seasons and they turned out just fine.

Werenski is a highly touted player in the Blue Jackets system. He will be given every opportunity this season to establish himself in the NHL. As much as fans want him to, he will not come in and be a difference maker right out of the gate. He should score around 21-22 points and expecting anything over 30 is just setting the bar way too high. He is going to be a very good defencemen, but it’s going to take some time.

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