In the spring of 2015, David Pastrnak became the fourteenth eighteen-year-old (on Feb. 1) to play a game at the NHL level in Boston Bruins history. By the end of the season, he had scored more points than all but three others. Of those, Bobby Orr and Patrice Bergeron stick out, while the first year of the short-lived career of Don Gallinger is an odd protuberance.

To gauge just how significant Pastrnak’s performance was, we looked at the exactly thirty forwards who had a rookie campaign between 2005-06 and 2010-11 at an age under 20 (again, on Feb. 1) with a minimum of 41 games played. The correlation between their first year performance and career performance was actually quite significant with an R-squared value of 0.70.

For forwards – like Pastrnak – who enter the League at a very young age, it would seem that their rookie production is highly indicative of their future production, as evinced by the chart below.

Given the linear regression, Pasternak’s 2014-15 performance of 27 points in 46 games played (0.59 points/gm) projects a future career points/gm of .704… or approximately 58 points per season.

While this might not seem like much, it’s only slightly less than Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci (who both boast 0.74 career points/gm). In fact, that’s a higher point/gm career number than Alex Steen, Ryan Kesler, Scott Hartnell, Milan Lucic and Andrew Ladd. It also compares well with Jakub Voracek, T.J. Oshie, Derek Stepan and Max Pacioretty.

Think about that: In that grouping, one would find multiple 70-plus point seasons and 30-plus goal seasons. For a player that twenty-three teams passed on (and Vancouver passed on twice); those are phenomenal comparables and really marks the one big ‘hit’ in the first round during Peter Chiarelli’s tenure as GM that was not an ‘obvious’ decision (as, it might be argued, Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton were).

The Bruins have a young, dynamic first-line-caliber forward whose ceiling is probably a point-per-game player (compare to Steven Stamkos); and whose floor is probably an average second-line winger (compare to Sam Gagner).

When you couple these comparables with other strong indicators of his future abilities: Like his top-notch 5-on-5 per-minute scoring performance at 2.47 points per 60 minutes (sitting in the ninety-seventh percentile among forwards); his 16.16 individual corsi per 60 minutes (eighty-eighth percentile). His WOWY (With or Without You) numbers in both possession and goal percentage at even strength were strong – as they show he was especially successful at driving the attack and at least average in preventing it.

With those kind of peripherals and a superb production-performance at such a young age, it’s easy to see good things on the horizon for the former twenty-fifth overall pick and League’s youngest player. Pastrnak probably won’t wind up as Stamkos, but all the signposts point to a winger who is at least first line, and perhaps All-Star, caliber.

The Bruins can probably live with that.

Stats Courtesy of Hockey Analysis and Hockey Reference

Follow Bob Mand on Twitter at @HockeyMand