The News of the Week
Before we get to the big performances of the week, we’ll run through the big pieces of news, just to keep everyone current. There wasn’t much this week in the way of news, but the one bit that we did get was kind of a big one. The Flyers announced on Monday that they’d traded Ronnie Attard to the Oilers in exchange for Ben Gleason, effectively swapping AHL defensemen. It was a kind trade, in a way, moving Attard to give him a chance for a change of scenery, to get the ball rolling in another organization after falling out of the mix for an NHL job in Philadelphia. Similarly, though, Gleason will serve as organizational depth, but we don’t anticipate him jumping the home grown prospects on the depth chart, so this shouldn’t be a concern.
Three Stars
Samu Tuomaala
And now to the highlight reels! Samu Tuomaala has had a productive season so far, and despite it being a light weekend for the Phantoms — with just one game on the schedule for them — but Tuomaala made the most of it. It was a handy win picked up for the Phantoms over the Thunderbirds, and Tuomaala factored in to two of their five goals scored. He kicked things off by picking up the primary assist on the first of what would be a hat trick’s worth of goals for Jacob Gaucher, before putting in a goal of his own.
That was one more goal for Tuomaala on the power play, as well, as he’s continued to come up big for the team on the man-advantage and fuel a top unit which has found a good bit of success so far this season — curiously though, Tuomaala’s still looking for his first goal of the season at even strength. However it’s distributed, the offense has been coming along nicely for Tuomaala so far. He’s getting a lot of chances — he added five shots on goal in this game alone — and these two points added have brought him back up to that point per game scoring pace, at least for the time being.
Cole Knuble
Over in Notre Dame of the NCAA, Cole Knuble continues to chip away at it and put together another very good early season. He added a goal and an assist across an exciting series sweep of Wisconsin, a big matchup within the conference, even if it is still so early in the season. Knuble’s been putting in some good work here — he began picking up steam in the second half of last season and hasn’t really slowed down since. With six goals and 12 points in his first eight games played, Knuble has stepped up as Notre Dame’s top individual scorer as well as points getter on the season.
He was always going to be a player who would have to show well to earn a contract, and who would need to take a longer development path, but as someone who came into the organization as a bit of a lottery ticket, he’s making his presence known, and his stock is nicely on the rise.
Carson Bjarnason
And we’ll round out this bit with a trip back out to Western Canada to recap Bjarnason’s very good week. It wasn’t a terribly busy one, in fairness, as he only had one start on the week, but that start was just about as good as it could get. Bjarnason held up well against a relatively high volume of shots, and managed to lock it down and carry his team to a win on the back of his 33 save shutout over Moose Jaw.
And just like that, he’s managed to bring his save percentage on the season up to a very impressive .924. Now, it’s still a very small sample we’re looking at here, just eight games, to the averaging can be a little volatile, but the fact remains that Bjarnason has been settling in to the season nicely and picking up a good bit of steam. And this is, if nothing else, exactly what we would have liked to see from him.
Honorable Mentions
Olle Lycksell
Before we close this thing out for the week, we’ll get to the quick hits of good but not quite star worthy performances of the week. First up is Olle Lycksell.
Lycksell added another assist to his season in that game against Springfield, bringing him up to four points on the season, and four points in his last five games played. He’s still waiting on that first goal of the season — it’s almost becoming laughable, in a morbid way, how unlucky he’s gotten to get to this point — but he’s driving offense nicely elsewhere. He’s starting to find a bit of consistency in the points getting, and with seven shots put up in that game alone, he’s managed to hold on to the team lead in shots on the season (with 35), even more than the defense group which is pointedly emphasizing getting more shots on net from the point. He’s doing all the right things as far as his underlying process is concerned, and it still feels like only a matter of time before the results swing all the way back around to match that process.
Yegor Zavragin
Sticking with the goaltender theme, Yegor Zavragin, though he didn’t have the perfect week that Bjarnason did, is still putting in really great work at the top level of Russia’s top league. It was a relatively quiet week for him as well, with just one start on the week, but that start was still a pretty good one. It came in a loss for the team, but Zavragin managed to stop 31 of the 34 shots he faced, which was an admirable effort in a challenging game. This also brings his season save percentage to .916, which, given the jump up in level of play he’s had to just to on the fly, is a pretty excellent result. It’s a long season, and we can expect some up and down for him just as we do for every player, but it remains that Zavragin has continued to show up in big ways, and that’s notable.
Noah Powell
And to close things out, we’ll circle back to the NCAA for a positive Noah Powell update! He’s had a slow start to the season — understandable given the steepness of the jump from the USHL to the NCAA, even for a more physically mature player like Powell, as well as the relative weakness of OSU’s roster relative to much of the rest of the conference — but this week’s pair of wins over Lake Superior State also saw Powell register his first point, an assist, of the season.
On the whole, Powell’s play has been pretty solid, but it’s clear that he’s still working through some growing pains as he adjusts to this step up in difficulty in the league. We’re hopeful that we’ll see the floodgates start to open up a little bit more for him, things start to click a bit more, now that the first month of the season is in the books, but we’re also being mindful to manage our expectations — he’s not going to be piling up the points like he did last year in Dubuque, but a temporary step back in that area while he rounds out the rest of his game is reasonable to expect.
