Quote:
Originally Posted by bax
Tkachuk was just a key player on a memorial cup championship team. Different leagues, but he also put up, what 30 more points? He was also over 2 points per game in the playoffs while playing a physical power forward style. It's pretty easy to see that last season Tkachuk was a far better junior player than Phillips.
And this is not a knock against Phillips. I love that pick.
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I'd argue that Tkachuk simply got hot at the right time. He was producing nowhere near what he produced in the playoffs in the regular season.
That, or he could just be a playoff monster, and the Flames need some of those.
After looking at the stats a little more though, I do concede that Tkachuk definitely did more to help London win than Phillips did for Victoria, but they were both very key players, and their offensive contributions are closer than one would think. Defensive contributions are slanted in Tkachuk's favor, though.
Using my rough math and limited access to league stats, I come up with Phillips having a primary point on 21% of his teams goals, and Tkachuk having 25% on the same stat. This ignores Tkachuk's (hyper-inflated imo) 2nd assists from playing with Marner and Dvorak. From this, and knowing that Tkachuk is deployed on the first line, and Phillips on the 2nd line, I can assume that their offensive contributions are roughly equal.
Tkachuk had a much better EV GFRel% than Phillips as well, and was 6th best on his team in that stat, versus Phillips being 5th last, indicating that Phillips' line get scored on a lot more than Tkachuk's line, though what drives this difference is difficult to tell. From this though, it would probably be safe to assume that Tkachuk is probably better defensively than Phillips (no surprise), since they both score goals at similar rates but have very different GFRel%.
There is no doubt that Tkachuk is the better prospect, but if you ignore his (very good, and something to get hyped about) playoffs and just consider his regular season (like most statistical analysts do (aside: why?)), his numbers don't really jump off the page at you and make you go wow.