Quote:
Originally Posted by druetetective
Drawing such strong conclusions from such a small sample size is absurd to me. Hodgson dominated the same tournament, although he was older.
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Why assume these are conclusions drawn from just the small WJC sample? Laine/Puljujarvi were establishing themselves as ahead of Chychrun for 2-3 before the World Juniors
ever started. And Chychrun himself is no chump, he's been compared to Ekblad in terms of draft-year maturity at his position.
What the World Juniors did however, was remind us that putting up pedestrian stats in a Mens league as a 17 year old, means little relative to your age-group peers who are playing against 15-19 year olds most nights. Talk numbers? Puljujarvi put up numbers in the World Juniors that bring back precedents of Jaromir Jagr and Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. There are also factors in both their games that don't show up in the numbers. Remember Lawson Crouse last year's draft? Remember how he was a consensus top 10 pick, deservedly so, despite putting up stats that looked worse than Morgan Klimchuk's draft year and generally NOT projecting as a star? That's because he plays a style, and has the tools to do so, that dominant NHL teams like the 2011 Bruins, and the Kings and Ducks have employed to high levels of success.
Everyone is always looking for a Nathan Horton. Except both Pulju/Laine are way, way more talented then those calibre of guys.
Hodgson, Granlund and Tatar? None of your examples have any common traits with the pair of Finns. None of those guys were top draft picks or projected to be. None of those guys had the ridiculous physical tools and skillsets that translate nearly 1:1 between leagues. The best comparable for either Finn is gonna be Barkov, who didn't have himself to be benchmarked against and was a wild card. Even then Barkov went ahead of Drouin and friends. Drouin put up Marner-type numbers too, and that on a Memorial Cup team.
I don't mean to turn this into a lazy big player vs small player Darryl Sutter vs Jay Feaster debate. Size isn't the only reason the Finns are good. But if you're going to keep pulling up guys who had good World Juniors, talk about guys that have some similarities in their projection.