Prospect stat report: Postseason progress

The prospect stat recap is back! We\'re talking about the playoffs because, well, at least someone (many someones, in fact) in this organization has gotten to experience some playoff hockey. Let\'s get into it.

Prospects Playing in the AHL

We\'ll kick things off with the Phantoms, who have just wrapped up their first four games of the postseason (picking up wins in the first two to sweep Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in their first round, best-of-three series, then dropping their first two in this best-of-five series against Hershey). We haven\'t seen a huge outpouring of offense so far -- particularly in this second round -- but the prospects have done well to get involved in the scoring that the team has managed so far.

Emil Andrae and Ronnie Attard both contributed power play goals in Game 2 against the Penguins, and that was a real boost to the team, as they\'d been looking to get more out of the power play after a pretty cold showing in Game 1. Hunter McDonald also got involved in the scoring in Game 2 against the Bears -- their only goal scored in that game -- as he picked up his first professional goal, albeit in a losing effort by the team.

And the Bobby Brink and Olle Lycksell both have two assists so far, but look like they should have at least one goal each -- they\'ve been buzzing well so far, creating a good number of chances, but the bounces haven\'t been going in their favor. But, all of that said, if the Phantoms want to push this series to more than three games, and even advance, they\'re going to need more from everyone.

And for the sake of completeness, we did also include our pair of prospects who haven\'t gotten in for a game yet with the Phantoms. To address them quickly: Ethan Samson is, as far as we\'re aware, healthy, but with Ronnie Attard and Adam Ginning returned from the Flyers at the end of the season, and HunterMcDonald joining late and impressing the coaching staff, he\'s on the outside of the defense group looking in, even as they have played seven defensemen in three of their four playoff games so far. And then as for Samu Tuomaala, he took an injury (which remains undisclosed) in the second to last week of the regular season, and remains out as a result of that.

Prospects Playing in Canadian Juniors

The top producer of the prospect group in the CHL and BCHL playoffs should not be a surprise, because it\'s that same top producer of the regular season -- one Denver Barkey. We tend to see things tighten up quite a bit by the time the playoffs roll around, and while we see that reflected in some of these players\' scoring impacts (Oliver Bonk, for one, though we can hardly be too critical of his eight points in 14 games, even if the pace is down a bit from his one in the regular season), Barkey has seemingly been hardly slowed down by this. He\'s still cruising at over a point per game scoring pace, and has been a big piece of London\'s success so far.

Speaking of breaking that point per game mark, Alexis Gendron is putting in a nice bit of work with Drummondville since he\'s returned from injury. The goal scoring hasn\'t exploded for him in quite the same was as it did last year (when he just kept on putting up hat tricks somehow), but eight goals in 11 games is still a more than respectable total.

And finally, if there\'s one player that\'s found a way to really elevate his game this postseason, it\'s Carter Sotheran. He picked up some real steam down the stretch of the regular season, and carried that momentum with him pretty easily in these playoffs. Portland has been scoring well on the whole, but the fact that they\'ve been able to get offensive contributions like this from their back end has given them a real boost.

The Goalie Grab Bag

And moving into the goaltending section, we really are running the whole gambit of results. Yegor Zavragin, in also the largest sample of playoff action, found the most success. In his VHL playoff run, he was able to keep the ball rolling after some quite positive regular season play,

And in his one MHL game played, he was perfect. The best goaltending prospect on the planet. Who can argue with those numbers?

Alexei Kolosov, as we touched on in real time in our weekly prospect reports, despite not finding the team success to match the level of his individual play -- Minsk was knocked out of the playoffs in six games in the first round -- did still put together some very solid individual play. A GAA well under 2.5 and a .925 save percentage? There\'s not much more we could have hoped to see from him.

And as for Carson Bjarnason, this was a tough postseason for he and his Wheat Kings teammates. Swept in the first round, they struggled pretty mightily. On an individual level for Bjarnason, the fact that he came away with a Goals Against Average over seven, but still managed to hold a save percentage pretty well over .800 should tell us just how badly he was being lit up in those games, how difficult of a position he was put in. It\'s hard to take much away in terms of sweeping impressions from a series like that, so we\'ll leave it at this: his regular season work was overall pretty good, and we\'ll see how he builds on that next season.

Talking Points