Let’s check out which Canucks prospects demanded the spotlight in December and January.

Since the beginning of the 2015-16 hockey season, there has been a lot of talk about Carl Neill, Vancouver’s 5th round selection currently playing for Sherbrooke in the QMJHL. Rightfully so: Neill has spent most of the season leading all Canucks prospects in points. (Not to mention having an entire town named after him.)

Not far behind though was Prince George Cougars defenceman, Tate Olson, Vancouver’s seventh round selection from the same draft. Carl Neill has cooled off considerably of late, while Olson is picking up steam as the season wears on. The 6-foot-2 Saskatoon native had his hottest month in December, tallying 13 points in 13 games (one goal, 12 assists).

The underlying context here is that Olson is playing in a considerably better situation than Neill and still a year younger. Prince George is currently third in the WHL’s Western Conference with a record of 29-18-2-1 while the Sherbrooke Phoenix Carl Neills are a disappointing 18-24-5-2, tied for last in the QMJHL’s West Division. December, in particular, was a strong month for the Cougars, as they won ten of thirteen.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that Olson is vastly superior in team oriented statistics. He is a plus-20 compared to Neill’s minus-10, and while plus-minus is a flawed statistic, a difference that large still carries some meaning. To level the playing field a little, we can look at even strength goals for percentage (provided by prospect-stats.com). Olson has an ES GF%Rel of +2.12, while Neill’s is -3.49, a noticeably lower number.

Fancy stats aside, the production from both of these players is very impressive. It’s very early, but 2015 is looking to be one of the strongest drafts in terms of late round selections the Canucks have had in decades, and Olson’s emergence is certainly helping that.

I’m fairly certain I spend more time writing about Jordan Subban than any other Canucks prospect. That’s probably because every week he seems to do something impressive – typically offensively, his area of expertise. Being a rookie, and somewhat of a defensive liability, Subban was scratched seven times in the first 22 games.

That all changed in the month of December, when the undersized rearguard exploded for four goals and eight points in a 12 game span – huge numbers for an AHL rookie defenceman. December 5th was the last time that Subban sat out a game, and while it was injuries that originally forced head coach Travis Green to keep him in the lineup, his large uptick in production made him a permanent fixture even when the Comets got healthy again.

By the end of December, Subban had rocketed up Utica’s scoring charts, finishing the calendar year in fourth behind only Hunter Shinkaruk, Alex Grenier and Brendan Gaunce, the Canucks’ top three forward prospects in Utica. Since then, Subban has passed both Grenier and Gaunce to become Utica’s second most productive player.

He’s a defenceman. A rookie defenceman. This is unnatural.

Canucks fans were attempting to temper their expectations for Subban coming into this year, but there hardly seems to be a point to that now. Everybody on the Subban bandwagon! This kid is an absolute treat.

Gaunce has come a long way in the last 16 months. The converted winger spent most of last season on Utica’s fourth line with a couple of spark plugs in Carter Bancks and Wacey Hamilton. It must have done wonders for his development because by the time the season was through, he was one of Travis Green’s most relied upon defensive forwards – and he could chip in offensively too. He was even named the Comets Most Improved Player during last season’s team awards.

This year, Gaunce has picked up right where he left off in the Calder Cup Playoffs, except with even more of an exclamation point at both ends of the ice. He’s well on his way to surpassing his point totals from his rookie season, and December was his most productive month of the season, putting up point per game numbers over the course of the month. At the conclusion of 2015, he had 18 points in 21 games.

Things have cooled off a bit since then, but Gaunce still remains a key cog in all aspects of the Comets’ systems. He has a stranglehold on the estimated Time on Ice lead, clocking in at nearly 23 minutes a night. He plays on the first unit power play, is out killing nearly every penalty, protects leads, chases deficits.. There’s no situation that Travis Green won’t put him in with confidence.

Despite the fact that he numbers aren’t staying at the same level, I think think that he’s a prime candidate to come up and join the Canucks if a forward is moved at the deadline. His game is suited to the NHL level, and he’ll get another chance to prove that soon enough.

Lukas Jasek is a hard prospect to get a read on, mostly due to the fact that we almost never know where he is going to play his next game. As far as I can tell, Jasek has suited up for at least four different squads this year, including international play and three tiers of Czech hockey.

Technically speaking, it would be best for all involved if Jasek was spending most of his time in Extraliga, the highest professional league in the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, we have no control over that. Jasek seems to be a bit of an in-betweener this season, the equivalent of what you’d call a AAAA player in baseball. He’s having trouble making an impact in the big league, but he’s absolutely tearing apart the Czech junior league.

And I mean that. In 10 Extraliga-Junior games this season, Jasek has a whopping 14 goals and 25 points. These are easily the best goals per game and points per game totals of anyone in that league that has played at least 10 games.

The month of January was as fluid as any other for Jasek, as he played a handful of games in both junior and tier 1 professional hockey. At the junior level, he piled up eight goals and added a single assist in just five games of work. What is also impressive (I guess?) is his 39 penalty minutes in that same span. So what, is he some kind of goon now?

Well, who knows. All I can really tell you is that of those 39 minutes, only four are accounted for by minor penalties. 30 have come by way of misconducts, and the remaining five were for “coarseness”, which I assume must be fighting? Thanks for the help there google translate. (It should also be noted that 20 minute misconducts were assigned to each Jasek and his fighting partner, also labeled with “coarseness”, so there’s probably some major rules violation there that we don’t really understand yet.)

Anyways, Jasek has plenty of offensive potential, and his release from the Czech World Junior squad seemed only to increase his ferocity. He’s only averaging about eight and a half minutes per night when he’s playing pro hockey, and who knows what the quality of competition is like in the Czech junior league. I think I can speak for a large portion of Canuck fans when I say that I really hope that Jasek takes the opportunity to come to North America next season where we can keep a closer eye on him and the Canucks can have a bit more of a say in how many teams he plays for in a single season.

When the Canucks picked Adam Gaudette in the fifth round of the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, there wasn’t much optimism radiating from Canucks fans. The now proprietary PCS model gave Gaudette’s 2015 season a Cohort Success percentage of just 1 per cent. The feeling surrounding the pick was largely that his selection was heavily influenced by Jon Weissbrod, the Canucks new Assistant General Manager and noted USHL and NCAA fan.

The beginning of the 2015-16 campaign did little to dissuade Canucks fans from this mindset. He had no goals in his first six games before scoring in three straight games bridging from October to November. After that, he didn’t score again until January.

The new year seemed to flip a switch for Gaudette, who scored a goal in his first January game, and then proceeded to tally a point in every remaining game that month, finishing January on a seven-game point streak.

One hot month does not make a prospect’s future a certainty, but what it does do is increase the likelihood that 2015 might have been the Canucks’ best draft in terms of later round picks in a very long time. Gaudette is a fifth round pick after all, chosen 149th overall, and a pick in that range plays at least 100 NHL games only about 13.4% of the time, according to this research by TSN’s Scott Cullen. Just marginally increases his odds of success could at least make Gaudette look like he was picked in an appropriate spot.

Brock Boeser has been an unstoppable force in the NCAA this season. He’s done nothing but scores goals game after game, occasionally punctuating them with an accolade here and there, and setting the occasional record.

Boeser could honestly be a star every month, the only reason that he isn’t is that I just try to switch it up a bit and give other players their due. He was the first star of this feature in October, when he had five goals and two assists in eight games. In November, he had three goals and six assists in eight games, and in December he a goal in each of the four games he played (five goals total).

Despite all of that, January was somehow still his best months in terms of points per game, and he tied his monthly high in terms of goals with five. As of the end of Janaury, Boeser led North Dakota in points. What makes this even more impressive is that he’s played the last several games without his usual linemates, senior Drake Caggiula and Blackhawks prospect Nick Schmaltz, who are both out with injuries.

Beyond that, he’s working his way up the NCAA rankings. His 31 points are third among NCAA freshmen (behind Winnipeg’s Kyle Connor and Ottawa’s Colin White), and his 18 goals are second among the same sample. In fact, he’s tied for 15th in points nationwide.

Boeser has been earning plenty of recognition from the NCHC conference, named rookie of the week on January 18th, and then co-rookie of the month for the entirety of January. His 18 goals are already the most by a North Dakota freshman since Jonathan Toews and T.J. Oshie had 22 and 24, respectively, in 2005-06. Last I checked, those guys are pretty okay. Oh, and Boeser still has eight more games to catch those two, and scored goals at a rate of 0.83 goals per game in January, a rate that would allow him to at least tie Oshie, if it continues to the end of the season.

Boeser has done most of his goal scoring from distance, as his NHL caliber wrist shot just seems to be too much for the average NCAA goaltender to handle. He is most certainly not devoid of hands in close though. All of Brock Boeser’s goals in January were nice, but none were as pretty as this shootout goal that was so awe-inspiring, Pass It To Bulis dedicated an entire blog article to it:

That was just so filthy, I feel like I need to take a shower.

As per usual, whenever things start looking positive for Canucks or their prospects, the fear that it will all go sideways on us begins to intensify. With Boeser tearing up the NCAA, the natural fear is that he will pull a Justin Schultz/Kevin Hayes and leave us, like a partner who paid his way through college only to be left standing in the rain with a bouquet of soggy roses as he galavants off with some contender (probably the goddamn Blackhawks or something).

History has been tough on Canucks fans, okay?

Anyways, I don’t really think that’s that is going to be an actual problem that we’ll encounter. I think that Boeser will last another season in the NCAA, and we’ll see him up in the NHL for the 2017-18 season. Others have written on this issue already, including former Canucks Army prospector Josh Weissbock.

As always, February will provide another opportunity for new prospects to shine and earn a place among the three stars of the month. Until then, just keep re-watching that Boeser shootout goal. But don’t forget to take the occasional break to eat and play with your kids and stuff.