Scoring?

So, an issue people have been discussing since the middle of last season is where the scoring is going to come from. This is a good question. There is not going to be a lot of scoring. At least as it stands right now. At least if the pessimists are right. 

Right now though, I am going to say that as a matter of logic the pessimists are going to be a least a little bit wrong. In that I mean that there is no possible way the kids are going to put up the same numbers as they did last season. 

One poster I noticed on HFBoards.com went to the lengths of picking a few of the young guys on the team and putting up their goal totals so that he might show that we have lost so much scoring with no tangible replacement for it. To really address people like that I am going to take their stats and twist them a little bit. I am going to use last season to project where the kids may end up and in some cases I am going to use some reality to temper those predictions. 

So, first off I am going to see if Kyle Okposo can competently replace Miro Satan, if Blake Comeau can replace Josef Vasicek, and if Sean Bergenheim can replace Ruslan Fedotenko. I am picking these young guys because they saw NHL time last season on a semi-regular basis, or because they are guaranteed to see nearly first line minutes this season. 

Satan's stats looked like this:

Goals: 16 Assists: 25 Points: 41 +/-: -11 Average Time: 18:19

Vasicek's stats:

G: 16 A: 19 P:35 +/-: 1 AT: 15:51

Fedotenko's Stats:

G: 16 A:17 P: 33 +/-: -9 AT: 16:42

And for the kids we have:

Okposo

G: 2 A: 3 P: 5 +/-: 3 AT: 16:28

Comeau: 

G: 8 A: 7 P: 15 +/-: 1 AT: 11:40

Bergenhiem:

G: 10 A: 12 P: 22 +/-: -3 AT: 11:15

Looking at the stats it seems that the kids did not really do much last season. What a lot of people forget, though, is the ATOI stat (or AT as I put it). ATOI stands for the average time on ice and this is important if you want to accurately project how many points a player is going to score. Logic has it that the longer a player is on the ice, the more scoring opportunities that they will be involved in. ATOI is the first thing to remember here. The second thing to remember is that most of the kids did not play the entire season. Bergenheim is the only one to have played the full season on the Island. 

The way I am going to twist the stats used by the pessimists I am going to do some simple math, at least with Okposo and Comeau. If you do the math, taking the number of points scored and multiplying that with the percentage of the season the kids played and disregarding ice time the kids will get about this many points this season:

Okposo, last season played 9 games, rounding down one game to make it a little easier, Okposo projects as a 50 point scorer. So, not only did he replace Satan, but he is also out scoring Comrie also.

Comeau played in 51 games last season, which is about 60% of the season. He notched 15 points. According to the math, if Comeau played 31 more games, or roughly the other 40% of the season he looks to notch 6 more points for a total of 21.

Begenheim played in 78 games last season and the long and the short of it is that playing in the other four games of the season he should get just one more point. Not very exciting. 

Comeau and Bergenheim are looking at about 20-25% increases in play time and Okposo is looking at maybe a 15% increase in ice time. I am not up to the math for that, but imagine, if you will, the impact of that increased ice time. Basically, the young guys are going to pick up the scoring whether the try or not.  So if I make some kind of educated guess accounting for better ice time and reality what I come up with is Okposo scoring in a range of 45-55 points; Comeau scoring in a range of 25-35 points; and Bergenheim scoring in a range of 25-35 points. 

Other X factors for scoring are going to be the impact that Mark Streit and a healthy Chris Campoli will have as well as the impact Doug Weight might have on the team. Weight by the way, had 25 points in 67 games last season. He also got second and third line minutes playing for the Ducks. By only playing 17 extra games though, Weight was looking at a 30 point season. That is certainly not stellar, but he may very well make sure that at least one of the young guys on the team hits the marks I projected. 

Looking at the numbers, the scoring is probably replaced by playing the kids a little more. If Jeff Tambellini can actually start scoring life could be good. Right now Tamby is looking at scoring 6 points over a whole season. Of the young players on the Isles he received the worst play time for a player expected to score goals. Even Frans Neilsen had a better average ice time than Tambellini. The thing is that Tamby could be a star in the making. Now that he is no longer facing Nolan's ire he should start scoring. There are no obstacles in his way, and most people project him to play on the top lines with Weight and Guerin, two guys who have but one job, to get Tamby the puck in a way that will let him score goals. 

The bottom line is that even with the kids in key spots, the team is no worse off than it was in the middle of last season. The kids could seriously underachieve and not meet my projections, but they could also exceed them. Only time will tell. 

P.S. - this post will eventually be edited. I wrote this very early in the morning So it's going to need it.