New York Rangers: Projecting Ty Ronning’s future NHL production

The New York Rangers just signed prospect Ty Ronning to an entry-level contract. Let’s take a look at what he might produce at the NHL level someday.

Ty Ronning has been a stud at the WHL level this season. In 64 games, the former 7th round pick has notched a total of 55 goals and 22 assists, averaging about 1.2 points per game.

While he has produced multiple 50 point seasons in this league before, Ronning’s numbers have sprouted up exponentially. With that said, Ronning is a 20-years-old and considered an overager in the juniors. Juniors players are anywhere from 15-20 years old, so he is one of the oldest players in the league. Even though Ronning is not too much older than a majority of his competition, 20-year-olds, regardless of skill, dominate in this league.

To shine a light on this and what a season like this means for his future, we are going to plug Ronning’s numbers into Rob Vollman, the author of Stat Shot and the Hockey Abstract‘s model for what his production might be at the NHL level.

Get your calculators out, folks!

Vollman’s model takes into account a player’s age, point totals, and the league in which he plays. Each league and each age has a different quality factor. The quality factor is to be multiplied by the number of points scored in a chosen season.

For playing in the WHL, a player gets a 1.05 multiplier. That is coupled with a 1.436 multiplier for a 15-year-old, 1.262 for 16-year-old, 1 for a 17-year-old, .840 for an 18-year-old, .674 for a 19-year-old and .520 for a 20-year-old.

The way we even out the point totals is by finding the per 70 game totals. When you put a player’s per 70 game point totals with their league multiplier and the multiplier for their age, you create the EQ points that resemble what his stats equivalate to for an NHL team.

The chart below shows his progress in the WHL over the years and what it might mean for his future NHL production. I omitted his 17-year-old season of 2014-2015 since he only played 24 games and was hurt for a majority of the year.

Ronning’s WHL Production

As you see, while Ronning shattered his career highs in every category this season, his age was a big factor in why he produced the way he did. If Ronning ends up being a 46 point per year player at the NHL level at his peak like the chart above suggests he may be able to become, the Rangers got some damn good value in the seventh round of the 2016 draft.

To take this a step further, if we wanted to learn what Ronning’s goals-versus threshold was, or the value of a player’s contributions in terms of goals relative to a replacement level player, we take his EQ points, subtract 15 and divide that difference by six.

Related: A look at prospect Brett Howden

What you wind up with is an offensive goals-versus threshold (or OGVT) of 6.67. To give you a point of reference as to what this may mean, Ryan Callahan’s OGVT when he was drafted was 7.17 and Drew Stafford’s was 5.89.

And while those numbers don’t take his defensive play into account, and Volman has a way to evaluate that too, this is probably a good place to start.

For some other in-depth Ty Ronning stuff, Adam Herman of Blueshirt Banter wrote a piece about his proficiency at 5-on-5 and more.

Next: Rangers' top 5 prospects post-trade deadline

Ronning, a 5-foot-9 winger has overcome the odds many times before and will look to do so again. He will likely play with Hartford when his season with the Vancouver Giants is over. He registered five points in 12 AHL games in a brief stint in Hartford at the end of last season. With a better supporting cast there now, it’ll be interesting to see how he does.