Josh Anderson had a very strong 2016-17 season. After two seasons of bouncing up and down between the NHL and AHL, he was finally given the chance to be a full-time NHL player and he thrived. He played 78 games, predominately on the third line alongside William Karlsson and Matt Calvert, and scored 17 goals. His play has led to discussions about whether or not he should be protected in the expansion draft and if he isn’t he seems like a player Vegas would want.
Anderson is just 22 years old and filled an important role for the Jackets. He’s the ideal depth player because he plays physical and chips in some offense. Losing Anderson in the expansion draft is not ideal, but every team has to lose someone and if it’s Anderson, I think the Jackets will be just fine.
Anderson despite being young is very likely at his peak. He doesn’t project as someone who is going to be a top six player. He scored those 17 goals, but he only had 12 assists. 29 points is fine for a bottom six player, but he’s never been a big point producer at any level before and we shouldn’t expect that to change at the NHL level. We need to keep in mind that Anderson’s 17 goals were inflated by an all situations shooting percentage of 14.3%. That’s not outrageous but its high and scoring at that rate is usually only done by the top players in the league.
The two players directly above Anderson on the leaderboard were Auston Matthews and Logan Couture and the two below him were Patrick Marleau and Nicklas Backstrom. Those are some of the better players in the game today and have the skill level that supports their shooting percentages. Anderson is not on that same level and was benefited by some luck.
Digging deeper on Anderson it’s the same story. At 5 on 5 he was a below average possession player with a 46.91% Corsi according to
Natural Stat Trick. That was the sixth lowest total on the team. His shooting percentage was again very high at 9.24%. You combine that with an on-ice save percentage of 94.06% (per
Corsica) and among forwards who had 500 minutes of ice time, Anderson has the 23rd highest PDO in the league at 103.29, leading to an extremely good 58.82 goals for percentage.
All these numbers are unsustainably high. Looking at Corsica’s expected stats, Anderson’s expected shooting percentage on his unblocked shot attempts should have been 6.69%. His expected on-ice save percentage was 93.5%, giving him an expected PDO of 100.19. That would him an expected goals for percentage of 48.1%. He over performed his expected goals for by 10.72%, the 19th largest differential among forwards. Those numbers are much more in line with Anderson’s Corsi and are what we should expect from him going forward.
The other caveat here is that Anderson is a winger and the Jackets have plenty of wingers in the system. Two of the Jackets top prospects are wingers in Sonny Milano and Vitali Abramov. Going further down you have players like Calvin Thurkauf, Keegan Kolesar and Kole Sherwood, who all fit that same Josh Andersom mould of a big skilled player. Considering four of the five players just mentioned played in junior last season they are a ways away still. Looking at the AHL roster, you have players like Milano who could step in, Markus Hannikainen played a few games in the NHL this season, he could step in, or even a player like Justin Scott could step in if he has a good summer and training camp. The Jackets could also look outside the organization and bring in a depth player on a one year deal while they wait for some of those prospects to develop.
All this isn’t to say Josh Anderson is a bad player, because he isn’t. He’s a fine player, but his style of play and season he had, has led him to be overrated in the Blue Jackets community. He benefited from some good fortune over the season, and is a very replaceable player should the Jackets lose him in the expansion draft.
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