Canucks Weekly Prospect Report – January 3rd, 2014

Welcome to this week’s version of the Canucks Prospect Report.. it feels as if I haven’t been able to update you since last year!  This will be the first of hopefully 52 more prospect reports in 2014, and the players in question have been very busy post-Christmas.

As always, follow me @nuckprospects on Twitter for the latest in prospect news and feed free to send me any feedback on anything prospect related you wish me to cover.

Let’s get to it just past the jump.

In the first game back after the Christmas break, the Comets were unable to walk away with a win despite outplaying Ottawa’s farm team. The game was tied most of the way through but a late powerplay by the BSens allowed them to score with only 28 seconds left. The final score was 4-3, and the shot were in Binghamton’s favour by a miniscule 34-33 margin. Utica goals were scored by Archibald and Grenier (x2). The assists came from Biega, Mullen, O’Reilly, Pelletier (x2) and Grenier. Cannata was in net stopping 30 of 34 shots. The Comets went 1 for 8 on the PP and 4 for 7 on the #POWERKILL.

In the second leg of the back-to-back the Comets came out of the gate sluggish but managed to get on the board first. Goals were traded back and forth tieing the game up and sending the game to the shootout. It was the Hamilton Bulldogs that won in the SO after six rounds, leaving the Comets to head home with just the 1 point. The final score was 4-3 for the Bulldogs with shots well in their favour at 41-31. Goals for the Comets came from all Canucks prospects: Tommernes, Archibald, and Grenier. Assists came from Biega, Tommernes, O’Reilly, and Ferriero (x2). Cannata made 37 of 40 stops. Meanwhile, the Comets went 2 for 6 on the PP and 1 for 1 on the PK.  

After a few days break the Comets played Lake Erie at home on Wednesday afternoon. The Comets came out of the gate strong and controlled play for most of the way. The final score was 3-2 for the Comets with the shots in their favour as well (27-20). Goals came from Stuart, Pelletier and Archibald. Assists from Biega (x2), Pelletier (x2), DeFazio and Archibald.  Cannata made 18 of 20 stops. Comets went 1 for 6 on the PP and 2 for 3 on the PK.

Players stats who have played at least one game with the Comets, (X) indicates not currently on the active roster, so far are:

Goalies so far:

A lot of these did not get much news so you can see official notice on the AHL transaction page.

Currently the Comets are in 15th place with 25 points (11-16-2-1). They have been out-scored 72 to 90 (-18), and have been outshot 824 to 892 (-68). They are controlling 48.02% (acknowledging score effects) of the shots with an on ice shooting percentage of 8.6% and a save percentage of 90.1%. A simple version of PDO puts them at 98.7% which continues to regress. Their PP is currently at 20.34% (6th place and continues to rise) while their PK is 74.58% (30th place) and remains the league’s worst. The Comets are currently ranked 18th in Puck Possession amongst the AHL teams. 

Corrado has played in two games since being called up to the Vancouver Canucks, CanucksArmy wrote about this earlier this week and I provided some usage data on him. In his first game Corrado was 53% Corsi For and a 60% Fenwick For. In his second game, with 9 minutes TOI, he had a 52.6% Corsi For and a 50% Fenwick For.

The Comets are still in last place in the West but they are only 2 points behind 14th place and they have three games in hand with a much highest Est. Possession. They are also 3 points behind 12th and 13th place and 4 points behind 11th place.  I doubt they will make the playoffs this year (my Monte Carlo gives them a 12% chance) but I don’t see them sitting in last place for much longer.  

On Friday the Comets play at home vs. the Amerks before going on a road trip. On Saturday they’ll play at Toronto and then next Wednesday the Comets will play in Oklahoma City then heading off to Texas.

Most of the excitement on the OHL-front this week has come from Bo Horvat and newest Canucks prospect Dane Fox.

Dane Fox is an overager who plays with the Erie Otters on the same line as Gaunce. He scores almost 2 PPG. On one hand overagers rarely workout in the NHL, but on the other hand he has had great underlying numbers for the last few years and has been a consistent 1 PPG scorer for the last 3-4 years. He went undrafted due to injuries and attitude. Read more on him here and here.

The other interesting story is on Horvat. Currently he is not playing in London as he is at the World Junior Championship in Sweden. In four games so far he has 1G, 2A and 7SOG. Cam Charron has Bo Horvat with a positive scoring chance differential in Canada’s games. You can see here why Horvat wears #53.

And so far this year the stats of these players are:

Not much to say in the WHL. Hunter Shinkaruk has been shut down for the season with hip surgery. Meanwhile, Cederholm earned a goal and an assist, marking his first points in quite some time. 

Portland is 2nd in the West with 54 points and 5th in the BMO CHL Top Ten.

And so far this season the players stats in the WHL are:

Ben Hutton had no points in two games this week but continues to make things happen with 6 SOG in those contests. LaBate had 1 goal in 1 game this week. Also, it’s good to see that McNally continues to show that his suspension has not slowed him down with 2A and 3SOG in the 9-3 Harvard win over the Russian Red Stars. Harvard plays again on Saturday against Boston University. 

Statistics of NCAA players:

Polasek was released from the Canucks and no longer is in the system.  He appears to have joined HC Sparta Praha in the Czech league. This does leave a bit of a hole as he was always called up to Utica with injuries to defencemen. With Blain on the IR I am curious what would happen if Utica needs another defencemen. 

Steven Anthony has slowed down a bit in production with St Charles but it doesn’t help being on the worst team in the league. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in Utica next year. 

Statistics of players in the ECHL so far are:

Not much to speak of for the European players.

Well, as I said in the preamble the Canucks prospects have been busy this week getting back to hockey after the Christmas break. Most of the production seems to be quite positive. Until next week, make sure to follow me @nucksprospect for the latest in Canucks prospect news.