I did some statistical investigation based on the hypothesis that Crouse's low production isn't his fault.
I (pain-stakingly, I might add) counted shot totals in games with Crouse in and with Crouse gone. I determined that the Fronts average 35.6 shots per game with Crouse, and 29.7 shots per game without Crouse. That seems significant. However, I also calculated the team shooting percentages with Crouse and without Crouse: 8.89% with Crouse, 5.69% without Crouse (so for what it's worth, Kingston isn't an exceptionally bad offensive team, but rather has had utterly horrible shooting luck during the duration of Crouse's absense). So my hypothesis that Crouse was just getting ****** shooting luck is much less likely than I thought. However, the ~16% decrease in shots seems significant and suggests that Crouse's offensive impact is not negligible (and possibly significant).
I also did the same for shots against. I found that the Fronts had 30.0 shots against per game with Crouse, and 31.8 shots against per game without Crouse. This 5.7% increase in shots against is much smaller, but still notable I guess. I just did it because the data seemed incomplete without at least knowing it.
For reference I did the same tracking for Connor McDavid to see how Erie was affected by his loss during the injury and the WJC. I found that Erie experienced a 5% decrease in shots for without McDavid and a 12% increase in shots against.
This (very crude) data would suggest one of three things: Crouse's offensive impact on Kingston is three times greater than McDavid's is on Erie; Kingston has absolutely no replacement for Crouse's role for when he's gone, while Strome is a suitable replacement for McDavid; this data is absolutely meaningless since it is all situations and doesn't take into account score effects or other possible injuries or absences on these teams. The third option seems the most likely, but all three options have merit in my opinion.
And yet, there are still a ton of questions unanswered. Firstly, even if you only look at the games in which Crouse did play, he was only in on 21% of his team's goals (16 points on 76 goals). Compared to this, Strome is at 41%, Marner is at 50%, Barzal is at 49%, and even Travis Konecny, whose offensive production has been a much-maligned topic this draft season, has points on 27 percent of his team's goals.
Another thing would be ice time. One thing about bad CHL teams is that they tend to play their best players a TON. Players like DeAngelo, Domi, and Fabbri all play like half of their team's minutes. Per
http://chlstats.pythonanywhere.com/players/OHL/2014/, Marner plays about 27.5 minutes a game, Crouse about 26.7 minutes a game, McDavid 26.3, Strome 24.6, Konecny 22.3, Zacha 17.8, etc. The disparity in ice time between Konecny and Zacha particularly would help to explain their slightly underwhelming stats. But Crouse plays a ****-ton of minutes, so he doesn't have that explanation to work with. Crouse's points per ice time is truly pitiful.
As for Kingston being poor offensively, Crouse is 5th on his team in PPG. Considering that he plays as much or more than any other Kingston forward, I find that suspect. For example, take Pavel Zacha. He is hovering right below a PPG, which needless to say is less than anticipated. However, he's 3rd on his team in PPG (behind only DeAngelo, an established star-level offensive D in the CHL, and Nikita Korostelev, another potential 1st rounder this year). And then if you look at estimated ice time, you see that DeAngelo plays almost twice as many minutes as Zacha, and also that Korostelev plays about 1.5 minutes more per game as well (and his PPG is not a ton higher than Zacha's). This a very telling discrepancy between Crouse, and another player whose offensive stats have been in question.
One thing going for Crouse is that of his 16 points, 12 are at even strength (3 PPG's and 1 ENG).
