We’re back on schedule and back with another prospect report! It’s a quiet week here after a busy one last time around, but that’s just how it goes. We’re riding the waves in a long season. Let’s get right into it.
The news of the week
It’s been a quiet week, both in terms of games played for the prospect group as a whole (and their production, in turn, but more on that later) as well as general news happenings surrounding them. The one exception to that, though, is that after nearly a two-month layoff to recover from an appendectomy procedure, Massimo Rizzo is healthy and got into the lineup for the Phantoms over the weekend. It was a relatively low-event pair of games for him, but he did bring a bit of flash in spurts, which was nice to see. He’ll keep ramping up over the next few weeks, and it’ll be interesting to see what he’s able to do when he gets rolling, properly.
Three Stars
Denver Barkey
While London seems to have taken a small step back on a team level this season — they’re still a very good team, don’t get it twisted, but they haven’t reached quite the same level of insane dominance that they did last year — Denver Barkey is still plugging away, playing very well, and continuing to be rewarded with a good volume of points as a result. Barkey put up a goal and three assists over his last two games played, and seems to be picking up a nice bit of momentum. He’s up to three goals and 22 points on the season, through his first 18 games, and while that still has him sitting at just fourth on the team in scoring, that’s hardly an effort to sniff at either.
Carson Bjarnason
Bjarnason has been putting together a sneaky very solid start to his fourth season in the WHL, and he had another good week to tack on to it this week. He got in for two starts — playing in both of Brandon’s games on the weekend — and held up pretty well in both of them, despite the somewhat backwards feeling split in results. In his first start, he made saves on 42 of the 45 shots he faced but was stuck with the loss, and then he stopped 24 of the 27 shots he faced in his second game and led his team to a win over Swift Current. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
All the same, it was another pair of solid games for Bjarnason, and a pair which helped him hold on to his .920 Save Percentage on the season, and his place at the top of the WHL leaderboard in this department.
Carter Sotheran
We’ll stick around in the WHL for a little while longer to wrap up this section and check in with Carter Sotheran. It’s been a bit of an up and down season for him so far, with the offense coming more in spurts and the consistency still being a bit of a work in progress, but all the same, Sotheran is coming off of a pretty productive weekend. Over his last two games played, put up two assists (with both of them coming in Portland’s win over Lethbridge). He’s up to 10 points through the first 20 games of his season — a respectable total, but still a bit of a step back, with his average of .5 points per game down from last season’s .61 points per game.
Honorable Mentions
Things were particularly quiet in the AHL this weekend, as the Phantoms came away from their two game series up in Providence with two losses (one in regulation and one in overtime) and just one goal scored across both games. That’s not great news for the team on a collective level, but there’s a small silver lining for the prospect watchers. That lone Phantoms goal of the weekend was scored by Ethan Samson, as he continues his run of solid play. He’s been holding up nicely in increased minutes at 5-on-5, and with the goal coming on the power play, he’s continuing to be an effective quarterback on that Lehigh Valley second unit.
Austin Moline has also been looking to find a bit of consistency in scoring in his first season in the USHL, but he’s coming off of a productive weekend. He played in two games and picked up wins over Sioux City in both, and put up two assists in the process (though they were backloaded, both coming in the second game of the weekend).
And finally, Cole Knuble and Jett Luchanko round out our group of players who got involved offensively in at least some capacity this week, as we saw both get in for one game on the week, and come away with one assist apiece. Both also came in somewhat suboptimal team settings — for Knuble, it was a loss for Notre Dame against Minnesota, and for Luchanko it was in Guelph’s loss to Sudbury — but as biased observers, we’ll take the bit of individual production and run with it.
