Jets Nation Prospect Profiles 2016: #11 Michael Spacek

We are in the dregs of summer, so we take a critical look at the Winnipeg Jets organizational cupboards and highlight who we feel are the Jets’ “Top 20 Prospects” when looking at a combination of potential and probability of positive impact for the franchise.

We continue our prospect profile turning the Czech forward, Michael Spacek.

To be upfront, we’ve been high on Spacek for quite some while, going all the back to Canucks Army and Jets Nation pre-draft 2015 rankings where we placed Spacek 25th overall. Spacek was ranked highly after a strong season in the Czech pro-men’s league at only 17-years-old.

Over the past 10 years, only eight under-18 forwards have played in the Czech league for more than 20 games and scored more than 5 points. In highest to lowest scoring, they are Michael Spacek, Dmitrij Jaskin, Jiri Tlusty, David Kveton, Michael Frolik, Nathan Walker, and Pavel Zacha.

While some of these were in their 16-year-old year, it’s still a very impressive list to be part of.

Spacek to a shift in development, crossing the pond to play in the Western Hockey League for the Memorial Cup hosting Red Deer Rebels. The center-slash-winger started the season off hot, as the second highest scoring player on a dominant team and one of the top 10 forwards in the WHL.

A combination of a scoring slump and the Rebels adding three high-octane offense players in Adam Helewka, Luke Philp, and Jake DeBrusk caused Spacek to see his role diminish as the skater played on the second line for the later part of the season. He maintained being the second highest scoring player who was on the team all season, but his production pace fell greatly in the second half.

A late season slump in scoring hurt Spacek’s pGPS rating. The model suggests only 7.1 per cent of statistically similar players went on to play 200 games or more in the NHL, with over half peaking as fourth line or depth forwards.

That said, it was only one year ago that Spacek had the PCS model suggesting 33 percent of statistically similar players were NHL regulars. If we were even to assume the true Spacek was somewhere in the middle of the two seasons, he would still be pulling some of the best comps of the Jets non-first round selections.

Spacek had a bit of a setback year, although he doesn’t move in rankings from last season. This is more to do with the Jets influx of talent than the staying power of Spacek’s 2014-15 performance.