It’s by no means a guarantee, but the expectation is that Dylan Cozens will move up to play with the Buffalo Sabres next season. Due to the CHL-NHL agreement that was extended one more year, the only places Cozens can play are in the WHL or NHL.

After dominating the WHL with Lethbridge last season, it seems like the logical move is to have Cozens begin his pro career next year. With that comes the immediate transition into how they must do everything in their power to shelter him as a rookie. He’s currently their top prospect in the system and honestly their only forward with high-impact potential in the pool.

He was recently rated as the top drafted prospect in the league by Scott Wheeler of The Athletic. The Sabres don’t want to have another Casey Mittelstadt situation occur with this player. Mittelstadt was also thought of as one of the top prospects in the league a few years ago.

League Data

Heading into next season I wanted to try to get a full understanding of what expectations are realistic for the eighth overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft. Therefore, I went and pulled a lot of age data from Evolving Hockey going back to the 2014-15 season. I also considered Micah McCurdy’s presentation on aging from the 2019 RITSAC conference while putting this together. We’ll get into a little more detail about how Micah’s research contributes to this work a little later on.

Let’s start with an area that intrigued me from the start in how 18 and 19-year-old players perform depending on which league they were drafted out of. In theory, I thought that players out of pro leagues like the SHL and Liiga would perform better against players out of junior hockey (CHL).

Turns out my theory may have been wrong.

As you can see above, 18 and 19-year-old’s that played over 300 minutes at 5v5 between 2014-2020 performed better out of the CHL in shot quality, shot share, and goal differential.

One thing to note in this chart above is the shade of the bars. The darker the bar the more players that made up that data set. The OHL players were the highest group with 15 players. The NLA consisted of three players, one of which being Auston Matthews. The KHL player reflected here is Marko Dano.

It’s important to note that because of the small sample size impacting the data.

My main goal was to evaluate the two main European leagues (Liiga and SHL) against the CHL (OHL, WHL, and QMJHL) and NCAA since that is where most of these players come out of when they’re drafted.

Looking at the twins’ SPAR (standing points above replacement) model we can still see the CHL players are favored over the two European leagues and NCAA in overall impact in this age grouping. This data works in favor of Cozens since he is coming out of the WHL. The players out of the WHL have the highest SPAR among all CHL teams and is second behind the QMJHL in on-ice stats.

Analyzing Performance by Age

While the league data is encouraging for Cozens, it doesn’t put into context how players at age 18 and 19 match up against the remainder of the league. This is the part where Micah’s research I referenced above comes into the picture.

He found that when players at such a young age enter the league that in most cases they are negative impacts defensively and their positive impact comes on the offensive side of things. Those findings checked out in the data that I pulled from Evolving Hockey with players in this age bracket going back to 2014.

In the chart above you only see players that were 18 or 19-years-old and played more than 300 minutes at 5v5 from 2014-2020. However, they’re plotted against league average in these metrics of all players in the NHL. As you can see, outside of a few cases, the majority of the players grade out below average in shot quality against. Another handful of players also comes in below average in shot attempts against at 5 on 5, but that group is not as large.

On the offensive side of things, we see the group shift to the right. More players are grading out positively in shot quality for (xGF/60). Remember, this is measured up against the league average of players of all ages, not just this age group.

As I said, this data lines up with Micah’s findings. Teenage NHL players are going to give you more offensively than defensively. Therefore, they should be put into a role that allows them to succeed with sheltered offensive minutes.

Position

The next wrinkle here is if we want to put a teenager in the position to have the most success in the NHL, what position should they play? If they’re already a winger, well the answer is simple; keep them on the wing. Centers, on the other hand, can be tricky.

In the charts above you may have noticed that I distinguished positions of the players in this data set with the color of the plot points. Here’s another look if you missed it and don’t want to scroll back up:

Honestly, from these two charts, I don’t pick up much of a trend by position when you place it against league averages. So, let’s bring it back to just evaluating the data set of 18 and 19-year-old players to see if something tells us a different story.

When we bring it back to that level we can now start to see that the data favors the wingers in shot share and goal differential.

Dropping it down one level deeper we can see an interesting distinction between positioning. Both positions measure similarly in on-ice goals against (GA/60) and shot quality against (xGA/60) at 5 on 5. Where we see the variance is in the offense. Wingers have a higher on-ice shot quality for (xGF/60) and more goals are scored when they’re on the ice.

One reason for this could be that centers have more responsibility defensively and have to put a greater focus on that as they enter the league. Which reduces their ability to impact the game offensively.

Peer Performance

The Sabres may want to give some thought to starting Cozens on the wing to ease his way into the NHL. The long-term plan is to play him at center, but starting him on the wing could allow him to make a smooth transition.

The Arizona Coyotes are taking this approach currently with Barrett Hayton. He was selected fifth overall in the 2018 NHL Draft. They placed him on their return to play roster and have him practicing on the wing.

Kirby Dach was another player that was drafted as a center that started on the wing this season with the Chicago Blackhawks. Dach played the beginning of the season with Dylan Strome to get acclimated into the NHL. Strome was his third-most-common teammate this year at 23% of Dach’s time on ice at 5 on 5, according to Evolving Hockey. Eventually, he was moved back to center after the quarter mark of the season.

Dach may be exactly what Sabres fans should expect from Cozens next season. They are from the same draft class and both are out of the WHL. He scored eight goals and 23 points in 64 games this past season. Looking at Dach’s individual impact in Micah’s model was nothing special, but what you’d expect for a player of his age.

Even some of the best players in the league have poor impacts in their first few years in the league as teenagers. Look no further than Jack Eichel’s first few years in the NHL.

Same can be said about Nathan MacKinnon’s first NHL season:

Conclusion

Any notion that Cozens is going to be some kind of game-changer for the Sabres next season is misplaced hope. Nothing is impossible, but that result shouldn’t be expected. If he comes in and has a great rookie season that should be a bonus.

If the Sabres plan on him being the center behind Eichel next season it would be another incompetent act on their part. They need to do everything in their power to shelter Cozens and make his transition as easy as possible. He should be put into offensively sheltered minutes at 5 on 5 with some minutes on the power play.

The message from Kevyn Adams has been to put more of a focus on data in making hockey decisions. If this is the case they should be in line with the data we just went through and will make the proper decisions to help their top prospect succeed.

Data via: Evolving Hockey and Hockeyviz.com