They're not similar players. And before we go down the rabbit season/duck season thing of "I didn't say they were similar, just the numbers are..." I'm saying it for a purpose. Pinto's stats - particularly after his move to TC - were negatively affected by his own strengths. I say this as the biggest champion for Pinto on our staff (and maybe in the scouting world, I said at the time he should be a mid first round pick). Pinto got power play time in TC, but not for virtually any purpose than to just get pucks back for everyone else. Their design was mostly for Ronnie Attard one-timers, even though they had Pinto's shot and net-front presence, they more or less ignored it and instead just relied on his incredible hockey sense, body positioning, puck retrieval/keeping ability, his ability to create faux/initial contact points against defenders, etc. to just get pucks back.
Everyone else on that TC team, with all due respect, were weak and not great at keeping plays alive...Ambrosio, the Swedish kid, uhhh, the kid that was gonna go to UND but went back to the BCHL (starts with a B, I forget), even the Rangers pick that d-man that can really skate (Jones?) ate a lot of high hits trying to keep pucks in at the line and got fed up with it...so, they brought in Pinto and just umbrella fired wildly towards the net, and every single time*, Pinto would just bully the other team into getting back. But it was rare that he was shooting it, and he would usually get passed out of an assist, so it didn't really reflect in his numbers there, but he was instrumental to the whole setup. I think TC ended up with like the 2nd or 3rd most power play goals that year.
In a more traditional situation, Pinto - I imagine - is a 70+ point player in his draft eligible year and I probably don't look like such a lunatic at the time haha
But that's the nature of it...anyhow, they just didn't come about their points the same way and they don't play similarly and there's different scalable pieces about both of them, and that really needs to be factored into it...
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