Winnipeg Jets’ prospect Sami Niku had his season come to an abrupt end due to injury, but he left signs of potential and promise after his first year in the Jets’ organization.

At no other point in history has the Jets lack of depth with left-shooting defenders been more apparent.

A season ending surgery has left the Jets’ without their top left-handed defenceman Toby Enstrom. The Jets were unable to call up stud prospect Josh Morrissey, who is also out for the season with an injury. While limited in ability, the Jets also loss depth with Jay Harrison traded with Andrew Ladd and Adam Pardy picked up by the Edmonton Oilers through waivers.

This has left the Jets running a left side of Ben Chiarot, Mark Stuart, and Julian Melchiori. It would be a completely defensible position to argue that none of these defenders are even NHL level (although to be fair a team could easily survive with one on the roster especially with the Jets’ strong right side).

There is some hope in Sami Niku, and it’s not only because he is the only left-shooting prospect after Morrissey.

It’s not typical for a seventh round prospect to be considered a potential solution, especially only one year removed from his draft. On average, less than 5% of 7th round draft selections make the NHL for more than 200 games, albeit the probability is better when looking exclusively at defenders.

Sami Niku may have been drafted 198th overall by the Jets but he was a highly thought of prospect going into the 2014-2015 season. In early fall, many scouts and pundits were predicting Niku to go in the second or third round.

Throughout the year Niku saw his stock fall, with many feeling that the Fin wasn’t reaching expectations, likely due to Niku’s pointless production at the World Juniors. This ignored Niku’s much larger resume in the Mestis, Finland’s second tier pro-league, where the defender put up 25 points in 39 games at 18-years of age.

Niku scored just four  points in the same game as Julius Nattinen, who was selected 59th overall by the Anaheim Ducks. The caveat was that Nattinen was also a forward… who you expect to score more. For more context, Olli Maata comes as the next highest scoring drafted defender to play in the Mestis at under 19-years-old with 8 points in 25 games (although Maata accomplished this a year younger than Niku).

This year Niku started off slow in the Liiga, the Finnish premier pro-league. He was sent back down to the Mestis for 7 games, but after coming back up Niku became arguably the best under-20 defender in the league.

Niku put up 11 points in 38 games, giving him the highest U20 point per game pace for defenders and the 11th highest for U20 skaters. Using the numbers at the Liiga’s official website, Niku was estimated to have the eleventh highest point per minute pace of all defenders in the Liiga.

Scoring is not everything, especially for a defender. Luckily we have some additional numbers due to the courtesy of Miika Arponen:

JYP, Niku’s club in the Liiga, were a pretty strong team; they finished fourth in the league in points and carried a 53.82 Corsi with Niku on the bench. The mere fact that Niku was able to grow into a second pair role on a playoff caliber pro-level men’s team as a 19-year-old is a pretty large feat.

Niku’s near zero relative Corsi percentage means that the team was no worse (or no better) with the young, rookie defender on the ice and is an even larger feather in his cap.

Niku is signed for another year for JYP and is expected to take an increased role with even more minutes next year. We could see Niku leave the Liiga and join the Moose late next season.

While the defender still looks like a long shot in becoming a NHL regular, his performance has far exceeded that typical of a seventh round pick and Niku represents how good value can still be found late in the draft if teams target offensive skill and avoid being overly influenced by performance in small-sample, big-stage tournaments.