Ethan Samson is trending in the right direction

This season was a long and quite up and down one for the Phantoms, and while it saw quite a bit of flux on a collective level, one standout in the midst of it is the stability the Ethan Samson was able to offer on the back end. In his second season with the team, he grew nicely into a more mature game, polishing out his details, and while there\'s still work to be done yet, he\'s doing well to keep his stock rising steadily in a crowded defense group.

Games played Goals Assists Points PIM Shots on goal Shooting percentage 69 12 12 24 40 140 8.6

Beginning with the counting stats, the most immediately eye popping development here is the uptick in offense. In just six more games played than in his rookie season, Samson scored as many goals as he did points in his freshman campaign, and double as many points overall, finishing the season second in overall scoring among defensemen on the team, and tops in goal scoring (and all of this while playing a more disciplined game, decreasing his penalty minute total by 16, and stepping up nicely in an area where good portions of the lineup struggled).

Now, some of this can be attributed to usage — Samson spent his first season playing largely down in the lineup with less consistent power play time, while this season he was given a higher volume of minutes at even strength and more time on the power play on the whole, including some sporadic reps up on the top unit as necessary — but a large part of this step forward comes from an improved process. Because we see, along with him doubling up on points, he also put up twice as many shots on goal over the course of the season, which certainly helped to feed his offense. It was effective for him, to be sure, and it saw his shooting percentage make a nice jump up, but it\'s encouraging to see it still sitting in reasonable territory, as it suggests that the clip he\'s producing at could well be sustainable.

Games Tracked Corsi-For % Scoring Chances-For % High Danger Chances-For % Primary Shot Assists Secondary Shot Assists 20 50.94 49.01 53.33 3 2

Digging in to the underlying numbers, though, and we arrive with something of a mixed bag. He tended to hang out around the breakeven point in these shot-based metrics for much of the sample of games we\'re working with (though the Phantoms did tend to give up a slightly larger share of scoring chances when he was on the ice), which is good but not great. He is, though, still a couple percent below the team average in each of these areas, which would tell us that on a team that was generally driving play well, he\'s lagging behind a bit, so there\'s room for improvement in that area, there are things he could do more in terms of either preventing quality chances in his own end, or to support the creation of them at the other end of the ice in a more dynamic way.

Because, for all the Samson did well this past season to get himself into more of a volume shooter role — something that the team seemed to be emphasizing in their gameplan, as just about the whole of the defense core looked to be prioritizing shooting from the points to create rebounds — we didn\'t see his playmaking popping to the same degree. There\'s potential for growth in this area too, as the Phantoms will look to transition into more of a heavy possession team under their new coaching staff, so it will be interesting to see how Samson fares with that.

Three Questions

Did he live up to expectations?

Coming into this past season, there was certainly the hope that, with more or less a full year of experience with professional hockey under his belt, Samson would be able to take that next step forward in his development to become a more commanding presence at that level, but the step he took even exceeded those reasonable hopes and expectations. The step forward on the offensive side was a welcome one, but how his defensive game seemed to polish out was just as big of a development. It wasn\'t always perfect -- and the team on a collective level struggled at times with getting settled in to their defensive zone structure -- but on the whole, he made progress in looking steadier and more decisive away from the puck. It\'s still a work in progress -- no one can snap their fingers and become a master of pro hockey, after all -- but he\'s gotten himself to a good place in his development arc, and things are trending nicely.

What would we like to see him improve on next season?

Samson likely saw a bit of a boost coming in to support his underlying impact numbers through his taking up a volume shooter role, but that still wasn\'t enough to bring him up to pace with the team\'s average, so there\'s still room to grow there, things he can do to further tilt the ice in his team\'s favor when he\'s out on the ice. He\'s doing his part in putting up shots, but we\'d like to see him take a more active role at the opposite end of the ice, and take a step forward in helping to suppress shots against. Now, hopefully there\'s something in the team\'s new defensive zone structure that will help the team improve this on a collective level, so it\'s not all falling on one player like Samson to get this thing moving in the right direction, but we\'d like to see him stepping up and excelling in that new setup. There\'s more that he can do in terms of breaking up entries at the blue line, clearing out players from the front of the net, things of that nature. It\'s the next step in maturing his game, in short.

What can we expect from him next season?

The Phantoms will be in an interesting position next season as it looks like, by and large, their defense core will be the same from last season. They lost Louie Belpedio in free agency, and they\'ll have Oliver Bonk graduating to the AHL, while late-season addition Ty Murchison sticks around for the whole season, so there\'s been a bit of turnover, but the key pieces all will largely remain in place. Belpedio\'s departure will leave some power play minutes up for grabs, but we can largely expect that Samson will be playing in a similar role in this next season. And in many ways, this feels like good news — the foundation of expectations on his part in those matchups is already set, and now he can just focus on continuing to refine his habits and approaches, and building his game in the right direction. Development is rarely linear, to be sure, but Samson is well poised to make that next step towards becoming a dominant player at the AHL level, and we\'re hopeful that he can seize that opportunity.

Talking Points