Another win for the Sharks and the playoff dreams continue.
Louis Domingue kept this game closer than it should have been. The game, overall, was a joke. Arizona kept shot attempts close during the first period but couldn’t get the puck to hit the net so the actual shot differential was severely weighted for San Jose. After the first the Coyotes did as expected and took a knee – everyone except Domingue that is.
Antti Niemi had a solid outing and allowed the Sharks to get the win without generating much offensively in the goal category. Nieto-Tierney-Wingels is a very effective third line. Karl Stollery played because – I’m assuming – people are disappointed in Tennyson. That said, Stollery didn’t play bad. He was definitely excited but he managed to come out alive with a good outing.
The Sharks are making the finish to the season interesting. They get to play Arizona again tonight for what should be another set of free points. Mike Smith should be in goal so the floodgates should be much more open. Should the Sharks win tonight and WPG/LA/CGY lose things will get extremely interesting with one point separating the Sharks from LA/WPG and two from Calgary. The odds are still against San Jose but if they continue to win they keep themselves alive.
*****
Yesterday we looked at the situation points for the 2014 Sharks draft picks that played in the OHL this season. Today let’s run through the WHL (Rourke Chartier, Alex Schoenborn) picks via the WHL website. I also included Alexis Vanier from the QMJHL because he’s the only Q prospect from last year’s draft. Vanier’s stats were taken the good old fashioned way – from the game sheets – because the Q’s website doesn’t like to break stuff down like the WHL/OHL. As with yesterday, the numbers in the brackets at the bottom of the chart are the total points for the player on the season.
The shorthanded production for these three players is almost non-existent but that isn’t a big deal. The percentage of even strength production, though, is way up. Both Kelowna (Chartier) and Portland (Schoenborn) were great teams this year and for Schoenborn it’s not surprising his point totals were lower than most of the other Sharks prospects from 2014. He was buried behind Oliver Bjorkstrand, Nic Petan and Paul Bittner – not to mention he missed over 20 games.
Schoenborn had the highest ES percentage of points out of all the CHL prospects from yesterday and today with 72.7% of his total coming at evens. The points weren’t plentiful but the percentage was nice. Chartier had a fantastic season for Kelowna and a great mix of situation points. 62.2% of Chartier’s points came at even strength and he kicked in 31 points in other situations – nearly equal to Schoenborn’s all-situation season total.
Vanier was traded mid-season from Baie-Comeau to Sherbrooke but neither team was a dominant club. They both finished near the middle of the pack in the QMJHL. Vanier did have more all-situation success in Sherbrooke, though. He had 11 points with both the Drakkar and the Phoenix while playing 10 less games for Sherbrooke. He struggled to find even strength success with most of his points coming by way of the power play. It was an ES/PP split of 4/7 with Baie-Comeau and 5/6 with Sherbrooke.
It’s pretty easy to see that Chartier had the best season of this group and his breakdown makes a stronger case for his season being the best of any of the CHL prospects this year. Let’s look at the primary/secondary assist breakdown via CHLStats.com. Side note like yesterday, though it doesn’t really alter what we’re looking at, CHLStats was missing three of Chartier’s ES points and one of Schoenborn’s. For Vanier there are no missing numbers, I got the numbers from the game sheets on the Q website because CHLStats.com doesn’t have the A1/A2 numbers for the QMJHL.
Here’s where the splits take a turn away from the mostly positive. Chartier/Schoenborn’s A1/A2 totals are the opposite of Labanc/Sadowy. All three players secondary assists exceed their primary assist totals – although with Vanier, just like Bergman, it’s to be expected. Now we can take two roads of thought without seeing every single play develop into a goal. Either we can go with the secondary assists being the creativity and hard work of the player developing something initially, or we can take the more negative approach and assume the primary assist getter generated 100% of the plays.
With Chartier it’s easier to assume at least a split of both scenarios given his assist totals and higher level of talent. For Schoenborn it’s harder to make that case as he has less than half of Chartier’s secondary assist totals.
So, after all that let’s look at everyone’s percentage of points that were even strength line up next to each other.
Take from this what you will, but I’m leaving most impressed by Dylan Sadowy of the Saginaw Spirit.
Thanks for reading.
*I'd like to send a huge thank you out to everyone who donated to the Canadian Cancer Society and helped me hit (and exceed) my fundraising goal for the Ottawa Marathon. I crossed over the 100% mark and the support is greatly appreciated. http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/timchiasson