On Friday evening, the Canucks unexpectedly dipped into the CHL free agent pool, landing Edmonton Oil Kings captain and second leading defensive scorer Ashton Sautner to a three-year entry level contract.
Sautner, 20, was a major contributor to Edmonton’s Memorial Cup run last season, playing a top-four role on the best puck possession team in the entire CHL, and now has two consecutive very strong WHL seasons under his belt.
Still, Sautner is an over-age player this season, and we know that 20-year olds playing in a teenager’s league generally look better than they actually turn out to be, so he’s an interesting gamble for Jim Benning to make.
So what do the Canucks have in Sautner? Read past the jump to find out.
In terms of stats, Sautner’s first draft eligible season was nothing to write home about, and neither was his draft+1 year. In both seasons, he scored twice and added 10 assists for back-to-back 12-point years. He was buried by the depth of Edmonton’s blueline though, so he never received a legitimate shot to stand out and garner more attention. Here’s what WHL scout Cody Nickolet (@DubFromAbove) wrote about Sautner’s game at the time (December 4th, 2011):
Was caught standing still a couple of times early in the game, but once he got the feeling for it he was much stronger. Showed off very strong mobility and the ability to rush the puck up the ice or join the rush. Really like his skating. Struggled a couple of times against the forecheck, but when he made the quicker play it was nearly always the exact right decision.
Like his passing abilities and his ability to play physically. Was able to battle hard in the corners and is clearly stronger physically then he would have been to start the year. Has a big shot and showed an ability to get it through traffic a few times. One big weakness is his stick positioning, it’s an area he can work on.
This kid is a big sleeper in my view. Is going to get hurt by a lack of minutes because of an amazingly strong blueline in Edmonton, but I would rank him inside my top 4-5 rounds.
And here’s what Cody noted this year when looking at over-age WHL prospects:
Sautner is a guy that has steadily improved and steadily grown his production as he continued to climb the depth chart with Edmonton. After posting 2 goals and 10 assists in each of his first two seasons, he showed a big jump up to 42 points in 72 games last year. This year he’s already ahead of that pace, too, with 37 points in 49 games while serving as their captain. But the points aren’t everything for him. He does a lot of heavy lifting defensively, skates well and has shown solid growth away from the puck over the past 4 years. I ranked him 42nd overall for the 2012 NHL Draft.
Sautner had his breakthrough as a 19-year old though, playing a major role on the WHL and Memorial Cup Champion Edmonton Oil Kings in 2013-2014. That year, he scored eight times and added 34 assists for 42 points in 72 games. Scoring seems to be a less reliable indicator of future success for defenders than it is for forwards, so adjusting Sautner’s 19-year old output for age and era won’t yield us much useful information, but we know that guys who never develop a scoring touch in the CHL rarely, if ever, become NHL-quality rearguards. Sautner did develop a scoring touch, which is the most important thing.
The most promising quantitative information on Sautner is largely circumstantial, which isn’t really comforting in terms of looking for meaningful and concrete information, but it’s still something, and it’s something that paints Sautner in an extremely positive light.
Estimating for time on ice tells us that Sautner played monster minutes as a 19-year old in Griffin Reinhart’s lengthy absence due to Islanders camp, injuries, and the World Juniors in 2013-2014, and the Edmonton Oil Kings absolutely decimated their opponents on the shot clock as well. From this, we can make a few key inferences:
- Head coach Derek Laxdal judged Sautner to be one of the best D on a super-elite team, and coaches are, in general, reliable evaluators of talent.
- Sautner was a massive part of a puck possession juggernaut, indicating that Sautner’s possession numbers were through-the-roof good.
- Sautner may make contributions in a similar manner to Chris Tanev that our data on junior leagues isn’t granular enough to capture, so his counting stats may severely undersell how effective he is.
I don’t like citing plus/minus because plus/minus is ridiculously convoluted for what it tries to measure and it’s also influenced by a number of factors outside of a player’s control, but it’s worth noting that Sautner led all Oil Kings in plus/minus by a country mile in 2013-14 at an astounding plus-59, which was plus-18 better than second place Curtis Lazar. It’s also worth noting that Sautner has carried a monster plus/minus his whole WHL career, especially considering his ice time he was given early on. At a certain point, a signal starts to appear in all this noise, and Sautner’s signal looks good.
The Oil Kings are a much shallower team this season than in seasons past, and in particular they lack the depth up front that they once had. Still, Sautner is carrying one of the best GoalsFor%’s on his team, and is again the #1D on a high-end puck possession squad, further supporting the notion that Sautner is an elite D by WHL standards.
Before you get too excited, some context for the word “elite” is important. Sautner is an over-age player this season, so the expectation is that he’s going to dominate a teenager’s league. Dane Fox and Mitch Holmberg were also elite CHLers last season, but they find themselves having fairly nondescript seasons in the ECHL this year. Elite relative to your league means significantly less when your league isn’t really your peer group.
To put it all together, the Canucks may have something in Ashton Sautner, even if that something is just a career AHLer. He’s not a top-10 prospect in this organization, and probably not a top-15 guy either, but he’s likely ahead of guys like Anton Cederholm or Mackenze Stewart, and circumstantial information tinted through the rose-coloured glasses of “hey, maybe things will work out and good things will happen!” indicates that he could conceivably, maybe, within the realm of possibility have a decent NHL skill set and might one day suit up for the Canucks. Maybe. Just maybe.
The Canucks might have a gem in Ashton Sautner, but then again, history tells us that they probably don’t. We won’t know for sure until a few more years have passed. But stranger things – like completely unheralded and undrafted Chris Tanev becoming a super high-end NHL defensive defenseman and elite penalty killer – have happened, so nothing’s impossible.
