Prospect Info: At 24th Overall the Jets Select Kristian Vesalainen

[dratbunnies]

No prospects playing today so I did this. The source video flickered really bad in a couple places so I edited around it. Didn't wanna mess anyone up if they're sensitive to that.

Thats great man, thanks so much!
That is the first I have seen of Vesalainen (besides just highlights). Love his skating, his composure and his effectiveness on the boards. Not really a big fan of how long it took for him to get either of those shots off on the goal...

 

[truck]

Points aren't everything. Nigel Dawes has been one of the best in the KHL forever.

I'll wait for players to come to North America before I anoint them the next Terasenko.

Dawes put up .4 points per game in the NHL. He wasn't horrible.

 

[DoingItCoolKiwi]

Vesalainen out with a injury. Concussion seems like the most likely scenario since he was boarded pretty badly in the last game.

 

[Whileee]

Vesalainen out with a injury. Concussion seems like the most likely scenario since he was boarded pretty badly in the last game.

I hope he recovers in time for the WJC.

 

[DoingItCoolKiwi]

I hope he recovers in time for the WJC.

Nothing to do with the boarding apparently, so that's good news. Would be nice to see him at WJC camp too

 

[TS Quint]

Good lord. Is Dawes 18? Where was he when he was 18?

Thats like saying Laine wasnt impressive in Liiga because some random old farts excell there.

Such a stupid, useless argument.

You're right. Put him in the HOF now! He's clearly better than Gretzky.

 

[KingBogo]

Nothing to do with the boarding apparently, so that's good news. Would be nice to see him at WJC camp too

That is good news. It would be quite disappointing if he wasn't at the WJC.

 

[TS Quint]

Dawes put up .4 points per game in the NHL. He wasn't horrible.

That's the point. People are looking at KHL points and talking about him being similar to Terasenko and clearly better than Vesalainen. I throw out Dawes (I can keep going) that's a pretty wide range. What people seem to miss is the KHL is a different game. You can do things there on the big ice that don't always translate over to the NHL.

Showing you can score in the KHL is a good sign and so is scoring in Liiga but it really its by far the only thing you need to do to make it in the NHL. Its a different game right Shipachyov?

 

[JetsFan815]

That's the point. People are looking at KHL points and talking about him being similar to Terasenko and clearly better than Vesalainen. I throw out Dawes (I can keep going) that's a pretty wide range. What people seem to miss is the KHL is a different game. You can do things there on the big ice that don't always translate over to the NHL.

Showing you can score in the KHL is a good sign and so is scoring in Liiga but it really its by far the only thing you need to do to make it in the NHL. Its a different game right Shipachyov?

We know for a fact based on studies done across a very large number of players that moved the NHL from other leagues that production in the KHL translates better to the NHL than it does from AHL/Liiga (which translates better to the NHL than the CHL and so on). Note that is based on a systematic study of 100s of players across these leagues than cherry picking examples like Dawes. Every league is different from the NHL, that doesn't prevent us from projecting how impressive performance of a player in that league is. Tolvanen has had one of the best seasons ever in the KHL, at this point most reasonable people would agree that he is a clearly better prospect than Vesalainen and better than most 2017 drafted prospects for that matter

 

[JetsFan815]

This article seems to have more info on the injury but is in Finnish Tuulolalle ei tullut pelikieltoa "tylsästä" tuomariin törmäämisestä - Vaasassa vahingoittunut Vesalainen sivussa - Kiekkoareena Google translate craps out spectacularly on it (at one point in the translation the coach appears to praise Vesalainen as a "hard dude")

 

[Kaako Kappo]

You're right. Put him in the HOF now! He's clearly better than Gretzky.

What are you doing? There are five players who've done anything close to what Eeli isis doing. Three of them are really good NHL players. One has not tried yet. Do you seriously not understand the importance of age here? How many games from Eeli or KHL have you ever seen?

When an 18 year old goes to a men's league and excels against players who are stronger, wiser and a lot more experienced, it means that the said 18 year old wields a set of specials skills, which VERY likely will transfer to NHL, because a 18-19 year old player with special skill set will be able to make adapt. And they have lots of time. All this stuff about the ice size is bullshit. Almost all European prospects play on hybrid ice or big ice when they're young, and amazingly enough they do make the NHL when they're the likes of Pettersson, Heiskanen or Tolvanen.

Besides Nigel Dawes is such an outlier he shouldn't even be allowed to be used in these arguments.

Now, i'm sorry that this thread has been derailed from Vesalainen discussion, but this does have something to do with him too.

 

[Whileee]

Here's an interesting article that does uses some additional adjustments for the NHLe to account for differences in the performance based on whether players jump directly to the NHL or via the AHL (Re-approaching the methodology of NHLe).

The use of the so-called "Wilson Method" for adjustment results in the following NHLe estimates...

KHL 0.73
SHL 0.67
Liiga 0.60

Using those factors, NHLe estimates:

Tolvanen 51.3
Vesalainen 37.4 (adjusts to 40.4 if you adjust for lower ice-time for Vesalainen)

Now, if you want to consider a bit more context, Tolvanen's team (Jokerit) scores about 34% more goals per game than Vesalainen's (HPK).

So, individual production (points/game) as a ratio over team goals/game:

Tolvanen 0.289 (i.e. has a point in about 29% of team's goals)
Vesalainen 0.344 (i.e. has a point in about 34% of team's goals)

Overall, considering adjustments to NHLe and context (team scoring and time on ice), the difference in production between Tolvanen and Vesalainen doesn't seem quite so stark as has been portrayed.

 

[Trilliann]

This article seems to have more info on the injury but is in Finnish Tuulolalle ei tullut pelikieltoa "tylsästä" tuomariin törmäämisestä - Vaasassa vahingoittunut Vesalainen sivussa - Kiekkoareena Google translate craps out spectacularly on it (at one point in the translation the coach appears to praise Vesalainen as a "hard dude")

It says Vesalainen isn't playing tonight, he was injured, face swollen but no stitches or broken bones, but he was feeling sick after the game.
The face injuries aren't the reason he's not playing though, apparently there were some other (previous?) injuries too.
And yea, the coach says he's a HARD DUDE because he got back on the ice even though he was injured.

They don't say anything about how long he's gonna be out, just that he won't play tonight.
I hope it's not a concussion

 

[DoingItCoolKiwi]

This article seems to have more info on the injury but is in Finnish Tuulolalle ei tullut pelikieltoa "tylsästä" tuomariin törmäämisestä - Vaasassa vahingoittunut Vesalainen sivussa - Kiekkoareena Google translate craps out spectacularly on it (at one point in the translation the coach appears to praise Vesalainen as a "hard dude")

"Naama on aika palasina ja vähän huono olo on."

Bolded basically means he felt slightly ill, which is a sign of concussion. According to this article, the coach said face injury isn't what keeps him away from the line-up, but didn't in any way shut down the possibility of concussion caused by the hit.

I'm going back to my original concussion theory. WJC is still almost a month away so I'm confident he'll be back in time. Coach also said he has been constantly playing through injuries, so couple of weeks of healing could result in even better form

 

[Trilliann]

Nothing to do with the boarding apparently, so that's good news. Would be nice to see him at WJC camp too

That's good to hear, the Kiekkoareena-article made it sound worse, especially the part where he was feeling ill after the game

 

[DoingItCoolKiwi]

That's good to hear, the Kiekkoareena-article made it sound worse, especially the part where he was feeling ill after the game

Kiekkoareena had quotes. I think the twitter user is making it sound better, not the other way around. After reading the actual quotes I feel like he has a concussion

 

[Aavco Cup]

No prospects playing today so I did this. The source video flickered really bad in a couple places so I edited around it. Didn't wanna mess anyone up if they're sensitive to that.

Looks like synchronized trapping out there

 

[TS Quint]

What are you doing? There are five players who've done anything close to what Eeli isis doing. Three of them are really good NHL players. One has not tried yet. Do you seriously not understand the importance of age here? How many games from Eeli or KHL have you ever seen?

When an 18 year old goes to a men's league and excels against players who are stronger, wiser and a lot more experienced, it means that the said 18 year old wields a set of specials skills, which VERY likely will transfer to NHL, because a 18-19 year old player with special skill set will be able to make adapt. And they have lots of time. All this stuff about the ice size is bull****. Almost all European prospects play on hybrid ice or big ice when they're young, and amazingly enough they do make the NHL when they're the likes of Pettersson, Heiskanen or Tolvanen.

Besides Nigel Dawes is such an outlier he shouldn't even be allowed to be used in these arguments.

Now, i'm sorry that this thread has been derailed from Vesalainen discussion, but this does have something to do with him too.

Would you really like more outliers?

 

[TS Quint]

Here's an interesting article that does uses some additional adjustments for the NHLe to account for differences in the performance based on whether players jump directly to the NHL or via the AHL (Re-approaching the methodology of NHLe).

The use of the so-called "Wilson Method" for adjustment results in the following NHLe estimates...

KHL 0.73
SHL 0.67
Liiga 0.60

Using those factors, NHLe estimates:

Tolvanen 51.3
Vesalainen 37.4 (adjusts to 40.4 if you adjust for lower ice-time for Vesalainen)

Now, if you want to consider a bit more context, Tolvanen's team (Jokerit) scores about 34% more goals per game than Vesalainen's (HPK).

So, individual production (points/game) as a ratio over team goals/game:

Tolvanen 0.289 (i.e. has a point in about 29% of team's goals)
Vesalainen 0.344 (i.e. has a point in about 34% of team's goals)

Overall, considering adjustments to NHLe and context (team scoring and time on ice), the difference in production between Tolvanen and Vesalainen doesn't seem quite so stark as has been portrayed.

Of all stats NHLE is the biggest load of garbage.

 

[Kaako Kappo]

Would you really like more outliers?

No, i am really tired of arguing about this subject. I really don't think most people on HFboards have seen enough of ANY European leagues to have any kind of real arguments or knowledge.

 

[TS Quint]

Ive never seen a more overhyped prospect from a non home team board than what you guys are doing with

No, i am really tired of arguing about this subject. I really don't think most people on HFboards have seen enough of ANY European leagues to have any kind of real arguments or knowledge.

this is all I'm saying. All these people are getting excited over this guy because they've seen some Stats. It's a joke.

 

[Luc Labelle]

Ive never seen a more overhyped prospect from a non home team board than what you guys are doing with

this is all I'm saying. All these people are getting excited over this guy because they've seen some Stats. It's a joke.

Tolvanen is currently scoring at a .857 PPG rate while Vesalainen is at a .760 PPG rate. Vesalainen has been closing the gap recently. From the non-stat perspective, as others have pointed out Vesalainen's physical tool box gives us a potential power forward with decent speed. Vesalainen started the season slowly and bounced around between the top and lower lines. Tolvanen was on fire from the beginning of the KHL season and I would guess has probably played more minutes per game.

I liked both Vesalainen and Tolvanen as top 15 picks prior to the 2017 draft. I am quite satisfied with our pick.

 

[mcpw]

should of draft couturier

should of draft couturier

 

[Gm0ney]

Of all stats NHLE is the biggest load of garbage.

Worse than +/-?!

Still, I think it's a reasonable approximation of league strength.

 

[Kaako Kappo]

Ive never seen a more overhyped prospect from a non home team board than what you guys are doing with

this is all I'm saying. All these people are getting excited over this guy because they've seen some Stats. It's a joke.

I've seen every single Jokerit game this season. I think he'll be a very good NHL player. He has the smarts, the shot and the skating is good enough. Makes fast decisions with the puck.