The month of February has come to close and that means it is time for our monthly look at the Sabres prospects. Last month I introduced a post that used NHLE to compare the prospects in the Sabres organization. It isn't a perfect science but it is a way to evaluate the players that play in different leagues.

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.

Corey Tropp is still leading the way at the top but his point total has slowed down in the month of March. The playoffs are approaching very quickly for the NCAA and Michigan State will need some offense from Tropp to have any chance of making some noise.

Late season pressure doesn't seem to bother Luke Adam. Adam has continued to be an offensive force for Cape Breton and has built off the momentum of the World Junior Tournament. Adam scored 11 goals in nine games during the month of February and has closed the gap on Corey Tropp at the top of the list of prospects.

Adam, Tyler Ennis and Marc-Andre Gragnani are the three players that seem to be playing the best at this point in the season. While the trhee players above are playing well, Corey Tropp, Jacob Lagace and Brayden McNabb are the three players that have cooled off during the month of February. March marks the playoffs for many of these players and it will be interesting to see how they handle the increased pressure.