Nikolaj Ehlers entered the league with a bang. He started off the season with eight points in his first ten games and was one of the favourites for the Calder after news of Connor McDavid being taken down with a shoulder injury.

Since then the Dashing Dane has slowed down, picking up only four points over the next sixteen games. Ehlers has since shifted down the depth chart to the the Jets makeshift third line with Alexander Burmistrov and Chris Thorburn.

Despite the recent set back, Nikolaj Ehlers is still having one heck of a 19-year-old rookie season and projects to be a special player.

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As it currently stands, Ehlers sits ninth in rookie scoring for the NHL with five goals and seven assists. While Ehlers looks good by the scoring numbers, he looks even better when looking at his on-ice impact.

The x-axis represents the volume of scoring chances relative to ice time the player’s team generates with the player on the ice. The y-axis represents the total amount of scoring chances the individual player has generated themselves. The colour then represents how much better a team performs in control of total shots (goal, saves, misses, blocks) relative to when the player is on the bench.

While Ehlers benefited from time with Mathieu Perreault and Mark Scheifele, but has since been with low-scoring linemates Burmistrov and Thorburn. Overall we can see how much help the players have been given with another graph.

The bubble colour and size still represent the same variables, but the axes have changed. Now the x-axis represents how much of an offensive zone push the players receive in taking offensive zone face offs versus defensive zone face offs, while the y-axis represents the average TOI of the player’s linemates (which includes forwards and defenders for linemates).

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The further to the bottom left a player sits, the less likely the coach has been giving the player help in producing. In addition, only Oscar Lindberg, Sam Bennett, and Dylan Larkin have been given less power play TOI per game.

Ehlers currently sits just under a 38 point pace. If he does finish with those point totals, Ehlers will tie Nathan MacKinnon and Jakub Voracek for 16th overall in 19-year-old point totals.

But what of underlying numbers? How does Ehlers compare to his peers in these?

Using Emmanuel Perry‘s Euclidian Distance Similarity Score application at War-on-Ice, we can look at the closest 5v5 statistical cohorts to Ehlers. The variables we use to compare are a player’s production in goals, assists, points, and shot attemts, their relative (on-ice versus on bench) Corsi, scoring chance, and goal percentage, their share of a team’s ice time, and their age.

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When we look at who sits closest to Ehlers, what we get is the following list:

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While there is some range in overall skill and talent, the list is comprised of ten legitimate top line forwards, with maybe the exception of Jeff Skinner who has been a shadow of his own self after multiple injuries.

There is something else to note from this list of players: there is a trend in player type as well.

Nation’s Network overlord Thomas Drance once said there are two types of players: table setters and those that feast. For the most part, the list is those that feast. They are not the two-way players like Patrice Bergeron, Jonnathan Toews, or Anze Kopitar, but they are some of the best producers in the NHL.

This is what we should expect from Ehlers. Ehlers is not a player the Jets should rely on carrying the play or setting the table, although he is not terrible there. As we’ve seen in Edmonton with Taylor Hall and Toronto with Phil Kessel, these players cannot be expected to carry the team. The young winger is a player though that placed in the right situation will feast and make sure the puck ends up in the opponents’ net.



