A few days ago we took at look at Kaapo Kakko and his record over the first two and a half seasons of his NHL career. With much criticism over his lack of scoring production, we wanted to get a realistic picture of how he has done compared to expectations.
Unfortunately, Kakko has been playing with a nagging upper body injury and the team has decided to have him sit out the next month or so to get fully healed. He won’t be back in action until March and that’s when we can revisit his progress and see how he does. One thing, if Kakko has been playing injured, it could have contributed to his lack of scoring.
The other Rangers prospect who has been subjected to the same kind of scrutiny as Kakko has been Alexis Lafrenière. It’s another tale of impatience and unrealistic expectations, the same challenges that Kakko has faced.
Let’s take a look at some of the same statistics we examined with Kakko, though with a much smaller sample size. Lafrenière turned 20 years old in October so he played his entire first season as a 19-year-old in a world of COVID-19 that kept him of the ice for almost nine months and into a NHL debut that was unlike that faced by any other first overall pick.
We will reinforce one statement we made before. It takes years before a teenager taken in the draft is ready to play in the NHL. When two consecutive drafts produced Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel and Auston Matthews, it raised expectations that the number one pick would not only be ready to play in the NHL, but would star.
It’s worth nothing that the three first overall picks after McDavid/Matthews were Nico Hischier, Rasmus Dahlin and Jack Hughes and while they are all fine players, none of them produced like their predecessors in their first NHL seasons.
Here are some statistics to pay attention to.
- Lafrenière has played more NHL games than any other player taken in the 2020 Entry Draft with 101. Tim Stützle is second with 97 and Jamie Drysdale has played 73 games. No other players have hit the 50 game mark.
- Lafrenière leads in goals scored with 22 followed by Stützle with 20. Only two other players drafted have scored as many as 12.
- Stützle has 52 points compared to Lafrenière with 34. While the German may seem to be off to a better start, his plus/minus number is -33 compared to the Ranger’s -9.
- Of the 217 players drafted in 2020, only 23 have appeared in an NHL game. Only 10 have played in more than 10 games.
Of the top ten players drafted in 2020, Lafrenière and Stützle were the only two to make the leap directly to the NHL. Quinton Byfield (#2), Jamie Drysdale (#6), Jack Quinn (#8) and Cole Perfetti (#10) all spent time in the AHL. Lucas Raymond (#4), Alexander Holtz (#7) and Marco Rossi (#9) honed their game in Europe. Jake Sanderson (#5) is in his second year at North Dakota and is currently playing for the U.S. Olympic team.
Even Tim Stützle, the second overall pick, gained valuable experience in his last season before the draft playing in a professional league in Germany while Lafrenière competed against his teenaged peers in junior hockey.
Of the top ten, only Lafrenière, Stützle, Raymond and Drysdale are playing regularly in the NHL.
Another issue in that learning process was how he was deployed by Coach David Quinn and this season with Gerard Gallant.