Weekly Prospect Statistics Review, Jan. 8, 2012

looking at the stats on his team, he’s in line with the other +guys.

On another note he’s listed on the portland site as 6’ and 173
He’s either grown or they’ve stretched the stats a bit more.

…and you know that you don’t get a plus for being on the ice when a goal is scored on the power play.

Plus-7 isn’t so bad on a team that has a plus-30 GF/GA ratio and scores a lot on the power play (61 PPGF in 218 chances, 20.0%, best in the WHL).

…at least not in Sonne’s case.

It’s because he was a 20-year-old playing on a powerhouse club (the WHL and Memorial Cup champions that season), playing against mostly 18-year-olds, and playing first-line minutes with two other big scorers on his line. Sonne’s linemates that year were then 19-YO Brandon Kozun (72 GP, 40-68-108, plus-50) and then 19-YO Joel Broda (67 GP, 43-34-87, plus-27)

In any case, you can’t look at Sonne’s totals as a 20-year-old in major junior, then compare them to what he’s getting in the AHL, without taking into consideration a multitude of factors… like the age (and experience) differential vs. most of the other players in the league; the linemates; the strength of the team as a whole.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that if you played Sonne exclusively first-line minutes in Peoria with Hensick and Sterling, and if Sonne were two years more experienced than the majoroity of the players in the AHL, and if Peoria was the dominant club in the AHL, Sonne’d be doing better than 6-6-12 in 31 games (which in itself is not bad production for a guy getting third-line minutes with the occasional shift on the second line).

Sonne was scouted and drafted as what he is in the AHL — a third-line energy player with the ability to take the odd shift on a scoring line and not hurt you.

Rattie, by contrast, was projected by more than one scout and mock draft last summer as a potential mid-to-late first-round pick. He is a scorer with good speed and hockey sense, and some people think the Blues stole him at 32nd overall. He’s still 18 years old, and on pace for a 100-point season already, and Portland is a solid upper-middle-class club, sort of like the Blues of the Western League.

It’s probably too early to assert that this kind of scoring is to be the rule rather than the exception for Rattie, but it’s pretty significant that he’s doing it as an 18-YO, where Sonne’s major junior breakout year came at age 20.

And if I caught the implication correctly in your post, you’re not impressed with the quality of play in the Western League. As someone who’s seen a lot of live WHL games in his life, and has followed the league very closely since moving away from Portland, I’m gonna say you’re making a mistake in selling the ’Dub short.

There are more than a handful of pro scouts and GM’s who will tell you that the WHL is the best junior league in existence, bar none, and that it prepares the average player (and the exceptional one as well) for a pro career NHL better than either of the other two major junior leagues.

1. in the league is #1 in the league :)

I chose to believe that’s how they trash talk in Europe – specifically while wearing a black turtleneck and dark sunglasses, talking to a fan of a Blue Jackets-like club!