Some off-day thoughts as the New Jersey Devils try to forget about Monday night's blowout loss at the hands of the Anaheim Ducks and look ahead to Thursday's game:
1) Devante Smith-Pelly is playing really well right now and is certainly making more of an impact than I expected when the Devils acquired him. In saying that, despite him logging pretty significant minutes in the top-6, don't expect this kind of production to continue moving forward.
In six games with the Devils he has 10 shots yet has found twine four times. In other words he is shooting 40%. If he wasn't going through this absurd spike in shooting percentage - he's a career 9% shooter - and shot to his career average in six games with the Devils he would have one goal thus far.
DSP has been a nice story and he probably does have a little more offense to his game than we've seen over the last couple years. In saying that you're kidding yourself if you expect 15-20 goals and regular point production from him on a year-to-year basis. For him to put up anywhere close to those totals he'd have to generate way more shots and I don't see that happening.
2) As many of you are well aware I was driving the Mathew Barzal and, to a lesser extent, Travis Konecny train for the Devils leading up to the draft.
Both were on the board when the Devils picked - they could have traded down, accumulated assets and selected either guy - but they elected to stand pat and draft Pavel Zacha.
For comparison sake I decided to look at the 2015-16 numbers each player has put up and they're not too kind to Zacha.
As you'll probably notice Zacha leads the pack in goals per game, which is encouraging, but comes out on the wrong end of every other category.
There's more to it than points, obviously, but generally you'd expect the 6th overall pick to out produce the 16th and 24th overall pick; especially when the 24th overall pick plays for the same team.
Sarnia pulled off a blockbuster deal to acquire Konecny mid-season and he has significantly out produced Zacha during his tenure with the Sting. It's also worth noting that several scouts are of the opinion that many nights Konecny has been the better of the two.
I'm not saying Zacha isn't and/or won't be a very good player - I'm confident he will be - but, again, you'd like to see more from a player selected that high in the draft.
3) Another note on Zacha: not a lot of junior players comparable to Zacha went on to become impact players at the NHL level but there are a few very promising outliers.
@ToddCordell DEV isn't promising for Zacha, but his best D-year comps include: Getzlaf, Johansen, Saad, Wolski, Scheifele, Staal & Pouliot.
— Zac Urback (@Zac_Urback) March 14, 2016
For clarification purposes DEV is a model that compares prospects to ex-CHLers that were comparable in terms of height, weight, and production at the same age. This, of course, isn't a perfect model but it provides some clarity on what you could expect if said prospect pans out and the likelihood he will based on the success of comparable players before him.
As Zac Urback mentioned in the Tweet DEV isn't too kind to Zacha but, again, there are a handful of quality players that made it big with comparable numbers.
The one guy that stands out on that list to me is Ryan Johansen - I see a lot of similarities with Zacha - so hopefully for the Devils he can turn into that kind of player.
Time will tell if that's the case.
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