Nic Petan is quietly having himself quite the season

We recently discussed some of the issues with the Winnipeg Jets’ farm team (part 1 and part 2).

However, not all news from the Manitoba Moose is bad news. While the team has indeed struggle immensely and the support from the veteran talent has been all but non-existent, there has been an exceptional skater despite having their exploits lost in the shuffle of a terrible team.

Let’s take a look at Nic Petan’s performance compared to some other individuals.

Nic Petan has scored three goals and 16 assists, good enough for 19 points in 26 games. Despite playing only about two-thirds of the team’s games, Petan already sits at third in team scoring. At 0.73 points per game, he already has an impressive lead on the team in that statistic, outpacing the next two by nearly 25 per cent.

Petan’s rookie production has been unprecedented for any of the Jets’ top prospects in the AHL since the NHL team relocated to Central Canada. This is all the more impressive given the offensive ineptness of the team.

We can see how impressive Petan’s scoring looking at his point per game performance relative to the team’s goal production:

This is really exceptional, and Chase De Leo’s performance has been impressive as well.

Now, to be fair, a bulk of the Jets’ best prospects have either not played or will not play in the AHL. Nic Petan is definitely the highest regarded forward prospect the Jets have ever assigned to the AHL thus far. We do expect his performance to be relatively better than JC Lipon, Scott Kosmachuk, or Adam Lowry.

Let’s take a look at Petan’s performance relative to some of his peers this year in the same metric:

The above list shows the ten highest point per game players in the AHL under 21 years-of-age and have played more than 10 games. While Petan has not scored as well as the top members in the list, he has driven a larger percentage of his teams offense.

Environment impacts players. The outputs players produce cannot be separated from the context they are derived from. This is in part why teams wish their prospects to be surrounded by competent veterans. Players on successful teams get to reap the benefits of more offensive opportunities and work on that portion of their game.

While Petan’s NHL debut showed signs of him needing to refine his pro-game, his AHL debut displays the skill level the Jets have in Petan and how excited they should be for when he reaches the NHL full time in the not-so-distant future.