Another Approach To Projecting Andrew Cogliano

I read an article on Irreverent Oiler Fans the other day that started me wondering on the offensive potential of Andrew Cogliano. That post worked backwards; looking at NHL impact players and identifying what percentage of them had similar seasons at the same age. What I’m about to do is the opposite; I’ll look at players who had similar offensive seasons to Andrew Cogliano and attempt to establish what range of offense he’s likely to produce as an NHL’er.

To do this, I’m going to use the “power play” function at Hockey Reference, which allows searches based on certain criteria. Let’s take a quick look at Cogliano’s season before we decide on our criteria.

Cogliano: 82GP – 18G – 20A – 38PTS, -6 (.46 PTS/GM)

I’ve decided to do a search of seasons by 21-year olds with the following requirements:

I got back a field of sixteen possible seasons (including Cogliano). Three of those occurred this season – Martin Hanzal and Sergei Kostitsyn, so those were eliminated. I also eliminated Milan Michalek, Brandon Dubinsky and David Krejci, since their first NHL seasons consisted of less than ten games. Here’s the remaining field:

That gives us nine possible comparables. We should also look at how those players performed in their first and third seasons. The first season is to compare to Cogliano’s for closeness, and the third to show the range of production we should expect from Cogliano next year. First, here’s Cogliano’s rookie year:

Cogliano: 82GP – 18G – 27A – 45PTS, +1 (.55 PTS/GM)

Here’s how the list stacks up:

Two players took massive steps forward in their third season (Richards, Perry) while one took a massive step back (Vrbata). That direction has so far shown which way their careers have gone – the players taking big steps forward are now legitimate first-liners, while Vrbata has had one good season since but is not currently playing in the NHL. The other six fluctuated slightly up or down. Of that group of six, three (Vasicek, Olesz, Bernier) are either complementary players or look to be heading in that direction, while the other three (Sedin, Afinogenov, Sedin) have been or are first-line players.

One thing that I find particularly surprising is the way this group clusters – a player is either at one end of it or the other. So what does this mean for Andrew Cogliano? I’d suggest that while we can’t draw many definite conclusions, there is one in particular that is important: Cogliano’s performance to date does not preclude him from becoming an offensive difference maker.

While I have repeatedly suggested that Andrew Cogliano may be useful trade bait given that he is a quality player with attributes (small size, youth, offensive ability) the Oilers have in plenty, this list makes me a little more hesitant to trade him. I’ve been projecting Cogliano all along as topping out as a second-tier offensive talent, and the fact that multiple players (better than half the sample: Richards, Perry, Sedin, Sedin, Afinogenov) went on to have a high-end offensive game makes me reconsider that projection. It may very well be that Andrew Cogliano has greater offensive talent than he’s been given credit for to date.