Schremp vs. Reddox vs. Potulny vs. Brule in the AHL

Much has been made by some fans over the order in which Craig MacTavish gave minutes to forwards who the Oilers called up from the AHL in 2008-09. In order of games played, they ranked as follows:

I haven’t included J-F Jacques since his AHL time was technically only on a conditioning stint, so the question I’d like to ask is this: based on their AHL play, do these four players belong in this order?

I’ve decided to look at a number of different statistics to try and answer that question. Since each player spent a different amount of time in the AHL, I’ve divided all their numbers by total games played to give a per game rate. We’ll consider goals, points, +/- and Quality of Competition.

The offensive categories and plus/minus all had exactly the same order: Potulny, Reddox, Brule, Schremp. Quality of competition, on the other hand, had Reddox on top by a fair bit, followed by Gilbert Brule, Ryan Potulny, and Rob Schremp.

It isn’t surprising that of the four players, Reddox got the most games: offensively, he tracked behind only Potulny, and the players he was playing against were better. Of the four, he’s also most suited to a role on the fourth-line and killing penalties, followed by Gilbert Brule. Given that a fourth line role is what was available to most of the call-ups, it only makes sense that Reddox would get the lion’s share of the games, with Brule (the youngest of this group) behind him.

As for offensive games, the only surprising thing is that Rob Schremp got called up before Ryan Potulny, since the latter had a far superior season. The splits explain that a little bit; Schremp was better in the first half of the season than he was in the second half. Regardless, after that point Potulny was the player who deserved – the player who had earned – a cameo with the Oilers.

Looking at their AHL achievements, it’s difficult to fault the order that Craig MacTavish placed these players in.  In fact, the only quibble that I would have is that perhaps Ryan Potulny should have gotten a longer look.