Statline:
GP | G | A | P | PP | S | SH% | COn | PDO | Ozone | ATOI | |
Ryan Spooner (NHL) | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0% | -8 | 1.0 | 50% | 9:07 |
Ryan Spooner (AHL) | 59 | 17 | 40 | 57 | 192 | 8.9% |
Season Recap & Evaluation:
Ryan Spooner spent the vast majority of the year in Providence leading a revitalized, playoff bound baby-Bruins in scoring. He saw only four NHL games of action in his rookie professional season, filling in for Chris Kelly after his injury at the knee of noted piece of human garbage, Chris Neil. In those games he played fourth line minutes, registered no points and did not see a goal against.
There's not a lot we can read into his NHL performance given that he scarcely had a chance to see the ice. Rather than skating in a regular spot, he rotated into occasional shifts with half the roster, riding almost as much with Horton as he did with Pandolfo. In sum, he didn't spend more than 13 minutes over those four games with anyone. Altogether, his appearances were brief and inconclusive. His -8 Corsi ON could go either way in just a single game's time, though it looked pretty dang nice when playing with guys not named Tardif or Caron. Probably a touch early to proclaim that he raised Horton, Lucic and Peverley's possession game though. At the dot, he wound up at 45%, but only had one bad game - his first. In all others, he looked nigh-on Peverley-esque. Of course, again it's far too tiny a sample to say what he'll manage on a regular basis
Is there any way to tell what we can we anticipate in the future from Spooner? Earlier in the year we took a look at NHL equivalency scores for our prospects and found Spooner projected to average third line scoring. For a refresher, the stat looks at the averaged historical performance of NHL players' 1st years and their prior year coming out of a given league to find out how much easier, relatively speaking, scoring is to come by in that league, thus providing an approximate tool for projecting performance. Finishing with a .966 PPG pace in the AHL and applying the NHLe AHL difficulty score of .44, Spooner projects to a 35pt rookie season. Which actually exceeds Peverley's 2013 pace, in case Chiarelli feels like exploring a cheap replacement in house.
Spooner will have to battle for a spot in camp yet again, but with a strong year in the minor league and a couple games under the watchful eye of Coach Julien, he stands a decent chance. I for one am ready to see a little of this on the third line next year:
Grade: A+++++++++ [EDITOR'S NOTE: actually, an incomplete]