I promised everyone a more in depth look at the Sabres prospects this season and I haven't held up my end of the bargain. This is an opportunity for me to make up for some lost time. With the help of The Copper & Blue I found a unique way to rate the Sabres prospects using the NHLE that was created by Gabe Desjardins at the great site Behind the Net.

NHLE is basically a way to estimate how a prospect would do if they were playing in the NHL based on their statistics in the league they are currently playing in. A full explanation on how it works can be found here.

How difficult is it to score a goal in the National Hockey League (NHL) relative to another league?  With half of NHL players coming from the minor leagues, a quarter from European Elite Leagues, 20% coming directly from Canadian Major Junior and 10% from the NCAA, that’s a question NHL teams try to answer every day.  In evaluating these players, it is critical to know how a player’s performance translates to the NHL.

 

One way to evaluate the difficulty of one league relative to another is examine the relative performance of players who have played in both leagues.  Players rarely play significant time in two leagues in the same year, but they often play in one league in one year and in another the next.  As long as a player’s skill level is approximately constant over this two year period, the ratio of his performance in each league can be used to estimate the relative difficulty of the two leagues.

There is not a player that is setting the world on fire but it's hard not to be impressed with the numbers that Corey Tropp and Luke Adam have put up on the front line or the numbers of Brayden McNabb and Nick Crawford on the blueline.

Crawford is a guy that I'm particularly impressed with because nobody thought much of him a couple of seasons ago. He started to come into his own last season and this season he has become a dynamic player in the Ontario Hockey League.

I will try to do this monthly and keep you up to date on how the prospects are doing and how that translates to the NHL. Thanks again to the people who helped me with this idea.