Thought it might be fun to do a quick stat comparison for my player comparing the season to season total between his first four seasons in both the SMJHL and SHL. To clarify, Gato was a S72 draftee, thus his inaugural SMJHL season was in S71, and his respective SHL rookie season was in S75. Going down the line we’ll compare the season stat totals as follows.

S71 -> S75
S72 -> S76
S73 -> S77
S74 -> S78

I think the goal here is to compare the output a player might see relatively to their time when first entering the league/recreating, and when they get the initial callup to the majors. Speaking from my own viewpoint, I could imagine that the larger TPE gap and playtime you might experience after making the jump to the majors, could result in a potentially disappointing rookie season. That’s not to say it’s all negatives! My main goal here is to just have some fun looking at stats, but felt a thesis of sorts would be a good starting point. There are plenty of perks to getting that call up to the SHL, such as getting a chance to play for the big cup, or a fresh take on the true rookie competitiveness when it comes to awards.

To start off, let's set up some ground rules. I’m removing a few statistical categories such as Penalty Minutes and splits like Power Play Splits/Even Strength Assists. The intention here is to look more at the raw stats that most players are likely to seek when checking the boxscore. Additionally I’ve condensed the stats into Offensive/Defensive/Other categories. Gato has and always will be a Defenseman so making the category distinction is important as we’ll mainly be looking for how the Defensive stats compare.

Categories
Offense
G - Goals
A - Assists
PTS - Points
+/- - Plus/Minus
S - Shots
S% - Shooting Percentage

Defense
BLK - Blocks
HIT - Hits

Other
ATOI - Average Time on Ice
GA - Giveaways
TA - Takeaways


S71 vs. S75

Starting off with our Rookie debut I don’t see the trends here as overly surprising. The relative TPE gap between a Juniors Rookie to the competition is much smaller than what you’re going to see during that first leap to the Majors. Notably one nice trend perhaps is a correlation where while the Average time on Ice goes down due to the TPE gap and more rostered players, this maybe results in a more effective performance during the minutes where you do see play. The abysmal 3.20% shooting percentage on 155 shots in S71 was definitely a low light of Gato’s first season. So seeing that metric jump in efficiency while not even taking half as many shots was much more encouraging.

Overall what we’re likely to see in those early seasons after a callup is lower stats due to less play time, which is a totally fair expectation given you may be playing with 2K TPE teammates it’s just nice to find a role anywhere. Of course this means if you’re obsessively checking those box scores the statistical volume may be slightly disappointing. But with all things you have to realize as a true Rookie you’re probably better comparing statlines with other Rookies rather than that of the rostered Veterans. After all, even a poor statistical season as a Rookie has a chance to earn you one of the coveted awards reserved to the players who are green behind the ears.


S72 vs. S76

Alright we’re into our second season now, and ideally if you’re keeping up with TPE tasks we can expect a decent jump in performance. Notably if you reference the S75 lines, ATOI jumps by a non-negligible amount between S75 and S76! This is great for stat volume where we can see clear improvements across the board as Gato is finally making a noticeable impact on the ice. While Offensive output went slightly down, you have to remember we’re all about Defense here! Gato is able to pile up 220 blocks during his Sophomore debut in the majors, an entire 98 more than during his season as a Rookie.

However, moving onto the comparison to S72, we’re still at a major deficit across the board when looking at the totals. Perhaps a little disappointing when we nearly pushed 300 blocks for the entirety of S72, but again if you adjust for Time on Ice, it’s not too surprising of an outcome. The continued narrative here is as long as you can maintain the mentality that your stats should correlate with Time on Ice, then really the total output isn’t all that far off from expectations. At this point we realistically shouldn’t be far away from taking that starting role going into next season as we approach the 1400 TPE mark.


S73 vs. S77

And here we are, finally after two long seasons of putting the work in, completing every TPE task, and doubling down on media during double media bonus, we’ve reached the promised land. Moving into a nearly full time starting spot the statistical jumps across the board are hard to ignore. Time on Ice is even below the juniors comparison season, yet the numbers are up everywhere. Sure there’s a small dip in the Defensive stats, likely due to how the lines were set, but the drop there is negligible compared to the overall increase.

From an expectations standpoint I think the trend here is pretty reasonable. The Juniors TPE cap of 425 TPE is set on mark for your third season in the league, so naturally you expect to peak and hit some career highs during that season. Just the same by your third season in the majors, it would seem a similar peak is achievable as your total TPE is finally rivaling some of the top players in the league. There are certainly a few different perspectives on this. From one side, having to wait until your 3rd season(7th total), to compete with the output you can see from season two in the juniors, can seem like a tall mountain to climb. However, perhaps there’s a sense of accomplishment to be had here, those that stick it out the longest will yield the greatest rewards.


S74 vs. S78

I’ll keep this one kind of short, but we’re being thorough here so it needs to be included. From an analytical standpoint there’s on major flaw in the 4th season comparison. That being that my TPE earning dipped pretty drastically around this time. So overall perhaps this isn’t the most fair comparison.

Still however, there’s a pretty clear drop in overall output between S77 and S78 in the majors. There of course could be any number of reasons for this including but not limited to gameplanning strategy, roster composition, and just overall team performance. That being said, while Gato was not earning TPE at a maximum pace, he was also not regressing in form, and the drop off from where thought to finally be in the upper tier of player is a bit drastic. Anyways like I said we’ll keep it short here. S74 vs. S78 is for all purposes an incomplete example and can be written off.

In conclusion, despite dips in statistical volume, we can see some clear upward trends season to season that give a sense of progression. Overall, it’s just important to manage expectations, take it one point task at a time, and set your goals within reason!