For my second deep dive I thought it might be interesting to look at the entire rookie class and pick out who has had the best season. I decided that the simplest way to do this was to look at Points and Plus Minus of each rookie and use those stats to judge who has been the rookie of the year so far in the SMJHL. I am completely aware that I am not looking at the entire data set to make my decision, but I thought this would be the simplest way to view which rookies have had the biggest impact on their team. I chose Points because it is obvious that scoring goals helps a team win games. I chose Plus Minus as the second stat I looked at because that helps show which players have been mostly successful while on the ice versus not successful. I also looked at Goals and Assists for fun, but Points encapsulates both obviously. Of the 72 rookie players I looked at there were only 17 that had a positive Plus Minus score. The top 5 players for Plus Minus are Jonas Kahnwald of the Newfoundland Berserkers with a +18, Kynwyl Pearce of the Kelowna Knights with a +11, Michael Withecheck of the Anchorage Armada with a +7, Mikhael Petrov of the Kelowna Knights also with a +7 and tied for fifth are Carolina Kraken players Aleksander Kozlov and Grape Fruit with a +6. When looking at just Plus Minus it is clear that Jonas Kahnwald stands out with his +18. A truly impressive number that still has time to get larger before the season ends. Kahnwald however is not near the top of players when it comes to Points scored with only 11 at the point. That tells me his Plus Minus might be benefiting from being on a strong line. Two names stand out when I look at the list based on Points scored and that's Michael Withecheck with 18 Points at the top of the list and Kynwyl Pearce with 17 Points scored. Both Withecheck and Pearce show up in the top 5 in both categories and therefore I think they are the two most likely Rookie of the Year candidates at this point in the season. If I had to pick just one of these players to be Rookie of the Year I think I would have to go with Kynwyl Pearce with the better Plus Minus between the two and I like that Pearce has a more even Goals to Assist ratio while Withecheck's Points are dominated by Assists. Below I pasted the table I made to be able to sort the data of just the rookies. This is the data sorted by Points. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out who to paste the table to make it look nice. One other item I wanted to mention is the fact that there are multiple players with a -20 or worse this season. These players are all on the two expansion teams and their bad Plus Minus is probably due to having to play on one of the top lines with a severe TPE differential compared to the line they are playing against. One other interesting thing to note is that Kahnwald is the only rookie in the league that has a better Plus Minus than Points scored. He really must be playing on a great line that scores a lot and doesn't give up many goals.

Season
Team Player G A P Plus Minus
ANC Michael Withecheck 5 13 18 7
NBB Alexis Vermette 8 10 18 -21
KEL Kynwyl Pearce 8 9 17 11
NBB Chad Danger 5 12 17 -12
ANA "Long" John Donair 9 7 16 -1
COL Rock Strongo 9 7 16 -1
QCC William Salming 5 10 15 -1
QCC Tres Sombreros 9 6 15 -11
NBB Sachimo Zoidberg III 4 11 15 -22
VAN Rikki Petrov 2 12 14 -7
QCC Zdenko Beranek 5 9 14 -17
ANC Vladmir Petrov 6 7 13 2
STL Xavier Doom 4 9 13 0
CAR Adrian Ayers 3 10 13 -2
NBB Raivo Helminen 10 3 13 -6
ANC Colin Fuhr 7 6 13 -9
QCC Yuuto Kira Cloudera Jr. 4 9 13 -10
ANA Karl Schaufelberger 3 10 13 -12
CAR Grape Fruit 2 10 12 6
ANC Slava Petrov 4 8 12 4
MET Calvin Hobbes 4 8 12 -4
DET Yngve Simonsson 5 7 12 -5
NLB Jonas Kahnwald 6 5 11 18
KEL Patrik Money 4 7 11 1
ANA Thomas Rose 5 6 11 -6
STL Jeff Nips 7 4 11 -6
QCC Zach Dolphin 5 6 11 -8
STL Matty David 4 7 11 -11
NBB Harry Peckins 4 7 11 -17
QCC Max Goodman 4 7 11 -19
QCC Jasper Maximov 3 8 11 -20
CAR Aleksander Kozlov 5 5 10 6
QCC Jst Maro 3 7 10 -6
QCC Julian Cunningham 3 7 10 -12
QCC Teylora Petrov 1 9 10 -16
QCC Kev Kevens 1 9 10 -22
VAN Sarah Burke 3 6 9 5
STL Bud Weiser 2 7 9 2
VAN Valtterri Kauppinen 5 4 9 -8
NBB Kenji Sugimoto 1 8 9 -13
QCC Boris Petrov 2 7 9 -13
DET Evangelos Giannopoulos 1 8 9 -18
NBB Tanjiro Kamado 2 7 9 -19
MET Lucas Johansson 2 6 8 0
STL Zbynek Dobrovsky 4 4 8 -3
QCC Jonas Caspari 2 6 8 -7
QCC Bobov Petrov 3 5 8 -10
NBB Grandmaster Funk 3 5 8 -14
KEL Mikhael Petrov 1 6 7 7
NLB Vaseline Podcalzone 2 5 7 1
KEL Viesturs Grābeklis 0 6 6 1
DET Anna Maier 1 5 6 -1
STL Jimmy Dekens 1 5 6 -7
NBB Bane 2 4 6 -14
VAN KnockedOut ByOvechkin 3 2 5 3
VAN Markleesio Hopscotch 2 3 5 3
VAN Zebulon Leavitt 1 4 5 1
COL Eero Makinen JR. 0 5 5 -4
COL Josh Dolphin 0 5 5 -5
NBB Oskar Baldus 1 4 5 -8
DET Čeněk Iqbal 2 3 5 -9
NBB Vili Afalava 0 5 5 -22
QCC Kyosti Karjalainen 0 4 4 -2
VAN Dee Centerman IV 1 3 4 -2
ANA Walter Burke 1 3 4 -4
ANC Halldor Ragnarsson 1 2 3 -6
ANC Lemo Pihl 1 2 3 -11
DET Oliver Setzinger 2 0 2 2
COL William Hunt 0 2 2 -2
KEL Logan Wong 1 1 2 -2
DET Daedalus James 0 2 2 -9
DET Monkey Mann Jr. 1 1 2 -13

APPROVED +5 TPE @ddrector

nice, good job!