A combination of the Ottawa forward’s early production and an exceptionally promising developmental curve have positioned him to take over as the face of the Senators, Travis Yost writes.
If year three was the breakout season for Ottawa Senators forward Tim Stutzle, year four may be the time we start considering him a superstar.In advance of TSN’s Top 50 pre-season player rankings, I started to evaluate Stutzle’s track record of performance – he’s fresh off a 90-point season with the Senators in his age-20 season, it should be noted – against other elite skaters around the league, and was surprised at how few players I’d be willing to bet on ahead of the German forward.
But a combination of Stutzle’s early production and an exceptionally promising developmental curve have positioned him to take over as the face of the franchise. That’s not an opinion I offer lightly, especially considering how good players like Tkachuk and Chabot have been. And while Stutzle’s individual goal production benefited from working with high-end passers like Giroux and Chabot on the back end, those players benefited from Stutzle’s own playmaking ability.
How do we explain the nearly five-percentage-point gap between real and expected goals? The talent within the skater group certainly skews offensively, and players – including Stutzle – can do a much better job protecting the net front and limiting teams to one-and-done opportunities in the offensive zone. But last year’s performance delta was about goaltending more than anything else.
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