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It’s been over a week since the Erik Karlsson trade, and at this point we can try to properly analyze the pieces that the Senators got in return. While the package is incredibly underwhelming overall, there are still a few things to like. And the most exciting player of the four for me is easily Latvian winger Rudolfs Balcers.
Even if he wasn’t a quality prospect, I’d be rooting for him simply for the fact that he’s another Latvian, and I love how almost every Latvian has both of their names end in an ‘s.’ But he most definitely is a quality prospect, and fans should get excited to see what he can do as soon as this season.
Balcers, 21, is a 5th round pick from the 2015 draft, and is slightly undersized at 5’11”, 174 lbs. He spent his draft year and draft+1 year on the Stavanger Oilers in the Norwegian League, and then the following season in the WHL with the Kamloops Blazers, and the 2017-18 season with the San Jose Barracuda. Because there aren’t many prospects that have come out of the Norwegian League, it’s a lot easier to analyze his past two seasons, and they look very encouraging.
First of all, his 77 points in 66 games in the WHL as a D+2 player isn’t otherworldly, but he also scored 40 goals, which was 11th in the league. That sort of goal scoring shouldn’t be ignored. It appears as if he has been improving every single season since being drafted though, because his freshman season in the AHL was quite impressive. Balcers lead the team in scoring with 48 points in 67 games, which might seem average at first glance without any context, but once we compare him to his peers, he looks much better
First of all, the next highest scorer on the team had only 38 points. Secondly, the Barracuda were dead last in goal scoring, so in a normal scoring environment he probably could have scored even more. Thirdly, his rate stats show him as a no-doubt first line AHLer, with only primary assists and expected assists not being of first line caliber:
And lastly, he did this as a 21-year old, so we can reasonably expect him to get even better. According to Emmanuel Perry’s NHLe projections, Balcers looks to be a 51-point player in his prime, which for a winger is essentially a lower end first liner.
His rookie season was a fantastic display of what he can do, and there’s no reason why he can’t spend a lot of this upcoming season in Ottawa. There are obviously tons of other prospects vying for spots too, but Balcers should be ahead of them because he has proven that he can score at the AHL level. Hell, he’s proven a lot more than guys like Colin White and Filip Chlapik who weren’t nearly at Balcers level last year.
I’ve read a few articles on him since the trade, and multiple times
this excerpt from a Fear The Fin article is referenced, and I don’t want to pretend like this is my own thought, so I’ll leave this well-worded and informative quote by “efowle15” here:
“Balcers, Balcers, Balcers. There isn’t much left to say about Balcers. As the Barracuda’s best player last season, he’ll almost undoubtedly see some NHL games this year. Using Perry’s NHLe and adjusting for peak age (25 years old), one projection method suggests Balcers might be a 51-point forward in his prime. This list of players shows Balcers had the 10th-highest age-adjusted NHLe among AHL forwards last season. Fifty-one points is still within the range of average forward production in the NHL, but it’s at the higher end of average...
The average 82-game point pace was 36 points. One standard deviation from that is 56 points, so a 51-point Balcers would be just shy of the one deviation threshold. If Balcers continues along the trajectory his numbers say he’s on, we will be witnessing the birth of a decent bottom-six NHL forward, which is about all San Jose can ask for from a fifth-round pick.”
He compares very well to forwards that are around his age, and he has proven at every single level that he can score at a solid rate. At first I was thinking that Balcers would be spending most of the year in the AHL, but after looking at his production and other Senators prospects production, there’s no reason why he should be the one to take the back seat. With his showing in the AHL last year, he essentially proved that he is ready for the NHL
right now, not later on.
Although he probably won’t turn into a key building block like Mark Stone, I think we can get excited about Balcers being an impact forward on this team as soon as this season. If he can score more goals like this, then it’ll be hard not to love him:
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