This article will be another in my series of player profiles, where I’ll look at each player on the San Jose Sharks and assess how their season went. This article will focus on Noah Gregor.
Honestly, this was a little early to be bringing Gregor up to the NHL. He’s just 21 years old, was in just his first year since graduating junior hockey and had basically no professional experience before being brought up by the Sharks.
He split the year between the NHL and AHL, playing 28 games with the Sharks and 25 games with the Barracuda. While he did produce well in the AHL, scoring seven goals and 19 points in his time with the Barracuda, he had just three goals and five points in the NHL. It’s important to note how small of a role he was playing though, averaging fewer minutes per game than any other player on the team to play at least 20 games this season.
That said, his underlying numbers with the Sharks were quite poor. He had a corsi for percentage of just 48.2 per cent, which was much lower than the team’s overall corsi for percentage of 50.7 per cent, despite having the highest offensive zone start percentage of any player on the team to play at least 15 games this season. He also had a goals for percentage of just 39.3 per cent and a lower expected goals for percentage than any other player on the team to play at least 15 games, other than Melker Karlsson (according to NaturalStatTrick.com).
He wasn’t afraid to throw some hits and also brought some speed to the lineup but this was too early for him to be playing in the NHL. Next season, we should get more of a sense of Gregor’s long-term NHL ceiling. He was able to take advantage of San Jose’s lack of depth up front and there’s a good chance he’ll be able to do the same next season.
***NOTE: We've launched a HockeyBuzz Sharks Twitter account! For anyone interested, you can follow @HB_Sharks for updates on articles, Sharks news, etc. We're starting right from scratch, so any followers would be appreciated!***
Here’s today’s poll question (results and discussion will be posted in a future article):
If Noah Gregor plays with the Sharks full-time next season, how many points do you expect from him?
San Jose Sharks Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»