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Reviewing Jack Quinn’s rookie season in the AHL

by Chad DeDominicis - 0

It was an odd 2020-21 season for Buffalo Sabres 2020 first-round pick, Jack Quinn. The Canadian-born winger was one of many players that were supposed to be in the OHL that found themselves in limbo due to Covid-19. The OHL never ended up having a season and Quinn spent his entire D+1 year in the AHL playing for the Rochester Amerks.

I didn’t feel Quinn was ready to step into the AHL, but he held his own for the most part. The good news is that the league was full of players in similar situations and watered down talent levels due to the taxi squads around the league. The 19-year-old also dealt with a hernia all season long. He eventually required surgery at the end of the season and missed the last few games with the Amerks.

These are all important things to remember as we go through evaluating Quinn’s season. However, I believe we can still make a fair evaluation on a few parts of his game that may need work or were impressive playing in a pro league.

Tracking Data

We’ll start by looking at the numbers. I ended up tracking 10 of Quinn’s 15 games this past season. Before I get deep into the tracking data, it’s important to note that the Amerks were not a good possession team overall. Throughout the year they gave up a lot of shots and high-quality shots against at 5 on 5. As such, the majority of these on-ice numbers are going to look poor, but we can look at how he faired relative to his teammates.

The first chart we’ll look at is on-ice 5 on 5 shot quality. You’ll see below that Quinn doesn’t grade out well here with a high-danger shot quality rating of 37.50%.

While watching him play I didn’t particularly notice that he was being run over in regard to shot quality when he was on the ice. Having said that, the shot share was a different story. It was noticeable that when he was on the ice at 5 on 5 that the Amerks did not have the puck that often. It wasn’t something that could have been written off due to the poor quality of teammates because he played with the best players on the team most of the time. He was with players like Remi Elie, Andrew Oglevie, and Steven Fogarty primarily.

When you see the on-ice shot share numbers below, you’ll see that my observation showed up in the tracking data.

This on-ice shot data is the overall theme for me with Quinn’s game at 5 on 5. He wasn’t impactful or really noticeable for long stretches of games at 5 on 5. When he was noticeable it wasn’t with his shot it was when he using his vision in the offensive zone to set up teammates with his passing. He was third on the Amerks in high-danger passing at 5 on 5 in the games I tracked. This is a great asset to have in his game if he can combine that with his scoring talent at the pro level.

Speaking of scoring, one of the issues that I did have with Quinn was his inability to get to the middle of the ice for shooting opportunities. He has a good shot, but he can’t be a perimeter shooter and expect to hit his ceiling at the pro level. I tracked all of Quinn’s shots at even-strength this season and you’ll see quite a shooting pattern below.

Quinn peppered the goaltender from the faceoff circle on the wing, but only a handful of shots from the slot area. I’m not overly concerned about it yet, but this is something we’re going to have to watch. One of the questions about him coming out of the draft was his ability to get to quality scoring areas without an elite talent on his line. In other words, can he consistently get the puck to the high-quality positions on the ice on his own at 5 on 5.

There is too many instances he passes up opportunities to drive the net or is hesitant with the puck at 5 on 5 which results in offense dying on his stick like in the clip below. 

The frustrating part is when he does get around the net with the puck he’s dangerous with his shot and passing ability, as you’ll see below. 

The area that Quinn did showcase his offensive upside was on the power play. He definitely seemed comfortable with the man advantage. This is where he picked up five of nine points on the season and the majority were primary points.

Plays like the one above give you hope about Quinn’s potential. He clearly has the offensive ability to be a playmaker and put the puck in the net. As he continues to develop, you hope that we start to see this leak over into 5 on 5.

Transition and Wall Play

Another area of concern for me was Quinn in transition and battling for pucks on the boards. I went back and read some scouting reports to see if these were issues that people noticed about him playing with the Ottawa 67’s. It turns out that these were a few concerns he had in juniors that carried over into this past season.

In his 2020 NHL Draft recap for the Sabres, Will Scouch discussed how he had concerns about Quinn’s game in transition. Not only offensively, but defensively as well.

This is something I noticed as well while watching Quinn this season. In my tracking data, only 23% of his offensive zone entries resulted in a passing or shooting play. He probably needs a center to be the player to drive the transition, but it was the turnovers that were an issue with me. He would force a pass into traffic or skate himself into a corner, which resulted in losing position in most cases.

Quinn’s play on the wall is something else that absolutely must improve before he can become a full-time pro player. He constantly lost puck battles on the walls at both ends of the ice. It was a bigger issue in the defensive zone as the season went along. It appeared as defensemen were scouted on closing down on Quinn because he struggled when there was pressure.

This again is an issue we saw in juniors. Below is a snippet from Josh Tessler’s scouting report on him last year:

“When he is facing tight pressure along the boards, sometimes he gets trapped and has nowhere to go. Quinn needs to work on fending off his attacker and using quick pivots to draw them off. Without working on deploying pivots, he will get sandwiched in the NHL and will struggle at working the cycle.”

Conclusion

I went into this wondering if Quinn could compete for a roster spot next season with the Sabres. After completing my review I don’t think that should be a consideration at all for the Sabres. There are too many areas of the game that he needs to work on before he can step into the NHL. There is no need to rush him.

It’s probably a good time to bring up again that nobody should come out of this thinking that Quinn is a bust. We saw flashes of the ability throughout the season, but now he needs to work on becoming more of a complete player. Some of these shortcomings are not unexpected for a 19-year-old playing in a pro league.

The Sabres would be better off letting him spend most of the next season in the AHL playing with J.J. Peterka, Lukas Rousek, Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Oskari Laaksonen, and Linus Weissbach.

Photo Credit: Rochester Amerks/Facebook
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