Welcome back to The Journey, where we track the development of prospects as they excel in junior, make the NHL, and push towards stardom.

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In World Juniors news, Sweden and Slovakia are the two teams to beat at the moment, with the powerhouse United States squad only a hair behind after needing overtime to beat Czechia. It is going to be an interesting tournament because the Canadian squad is not the star-studded affair we are accustomed to.

With Matt Savoie (BUF) taking a maintenance day today, WHL scoring star Jagger Firkus (SEA) has been added to Canada's roster. He has 59 points in 32 games right now, good for fourth in league scoring, and should add a serious goal-scoring threat for the Canadians.

By going toe-to-toe with the Americans, Czechia proved that this is still at the very least a five-team tournament. Notably absent from that group is Finland, who were beaten by Germany for the first time ever this year and have struggled to score.

Here are a few quick hits and notable performances from the tournament so far:

Frank Nazar III (CHI) is back to playing at an elite level after missing an entire season due to injury. He has six assists for Team USA and has been picking opposing defences apart with his visionary playmaking. Monitoring his NCAA production from a distance, I have been slightly disappointed at his point-per-game rate (18 in 18 for Michigan), but his scoring has been improving as he gets increasingly comfortable. He had 14 points in his last 11 before heading off to the WJC, so expect more of that upon his return.

Servac Petrovsky (MIN) is currently leading the tournament in scoring with eight points in three games for the Slovaks. A sixth-round pick by the Wild a couple years ago, his stocks are surely receiving a notable boost right now. He is only a point-per-game in the OHL as an overager playing in his D+2 campaign, though, so take it all with a grain of salt. He has been the trigger man (14 shots) for Montreal's Filip Mesar (one shot, six assists), who is better known but also continues to fly further under the radar than he should. Mesar's 32 points in 20 games is more the level of production one would expect from a blue-chip prospect. He is developing into a high-end playmaker.

To no one's surprise, Jiri Kulich (BUF) has four goals in his first three games for Czechia. The young Sabres prospect is one goal back for the AHL goal-scoring lead as a 19-year-old after already posting impressive numbers last year as a rookie pro. Buffalo will not be able to justify keeping him off their roster for much longer.

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As we approach the halfway mark of the 2023-24 campaign, Connor Bedard (CHI) leads an exciting crop of rookies in scoring by a country mile with 32 points in 35 games.

Other success stories this year include last year's second overall pick, Adam Fantilli (CBJ, t-2nd), Marco "Defying the Odds" Rossi (MIN, t-2nd), the third Hughes brother (NJD, 4th), Anaheim's blueline sensation Pavel Mintyukov (t-6th), and the steadiest rookie defender in recent memory, Brock Faber (MIN, 10th).

Here are the top 22 rookies right now, sorted by scoring rate. All stats from Frozen Tools.

With just over half-a-point per game, the uber-skilled Logan Cooley (ARI) is technically in the mix too. But after a hot start (13 points in 21 games), he now has only five in his last 14, a point-per-game rate of 0.35, which ironically matches the season-long scoring rate from Jack Hughes' rookie season back in 2019-20.

His ice time has been restricted in recent games, and he is currently on the second power play unit, which has resulted in a drop from 9 PPP to 1 over that same span. Arizona sits 11th league-wide in PP efficiency, so Cooley's decline in PP production is likely not a team problem. He seems to be hitting a rookie wall of some sort.

When he announced in the fall that he would be kicking off his NHL career instead of returning to college, everyone figured he would be the one to push Bedard for the Calder. Keeping in mind that this is a 19-year-old player adjusting to the toughest league in the world straight out of college, what is going on with this young man?

There is talk online about how his point totals are being propped up by getting a boatload of secondary assists on Clayton Keller goals. But he actually has a low secondary assist rate (26.7%), though, and if anything is overdue to catch a few more points that way in the days ahead. In fact, examining Cooley's metrics (via JFresh), we see a high-end playmaker who is struggling mightily to finish. Scoring goals is the big problem here.

Cooley is being heavily sheltered, and is not yet the dangerous weapon we all expected him to be with the man advantage.

Dobber's usage charts tell another version of the same story. Relative to his Arizona teammates, Cooley is being sheltered and not giving as much prime offensive zone deployment as you might expect. "Struggling Bottom-Six Forward" is the model's conclusion at this point in the campaign.

The sheltering is good to see, but the fact that he is still struggling so hard to drive play against the weakest Quality of Competition (QoC) available suggests that the Coyotes may have rushed Cooley to the NHL.

Although he has seen time alongside Keller and Nick Schmaltz, one consequence of sheltered deployment is playing with lower-caliber linemates. Lately, that has been Jason Zucker and Liam O'Brien. Over in Chicago, Bedard producing as he has been while stapled to guys with 40-point career highs is a testament to what a true line-driving talent can achieve. Cooley will no doubt become that but certainly is not yet a line-driver at this early stage in his young career.

Circling back to his 0% Goals and 1% Finishing ratings in the JFresh model, Cooley's main issue seems to be his inability to score. Part of that could be his low shooting rate. He is only averaging about 1.5 shots per game so far. Cooley is quite inconsistent at the moment too. A common pattern for him this campaign is taking 3-4 shots one night and zero the following night. If he can become more consistent with simply getting the puck on net, the goals should follow.

The other wrinkle with his shooting has been his ice-cold shooting percentage. His 5.7% is 16th on the Coyotes right now. While he has historically been more of a playmaker than sniper, he still averaged over half-a-goal per game in the NCAA and with the UNDP. Moving forward, we should expect to see that number rise to at least 10% and probably closer to Keller's 12.7%. If Cooley were shooting at that rate, he would have nearly seven goals right now instead of three and would be on a 50-point pace for the year.

Long story short: expect to see more pucks going in for the young man over the latter half of 2023-24.

Another promising sign is that although Cooley has only scored three points over his last eight games, he has posted strong Expected Goal (xG) numbers over that stretch—which adds additional weight to the imminent positive regression suggested by his low secondary assist rate and shooting percentage. While he has averaged a 45.5 even-strength xG% on the year, meaning he is getting scored on more often than he is scoring, he has posted a 67 xG% 5v5 over his last eight games.

In other words, he has been doing all the right things lately but has not yet been rewarded on the scoresheet. With only eight shots over that stretch, however, we have not yet seen the uptick in shots from him that will signal a turnaround on his abysmal finishing and goal-scoring WAR (wins against replacement) numbers.

Big picture, Cooley is still on track to become one of the most dynamic, exciting players in the NHL. Keep Jack Hughes' rookie year in mind as a strong comparable. Models like Hockey Prospecting viewed (and view) Hughes as basically the perfect prospect, and yet he did not explode offensively until his third year, about 120 games in. Ditto for Nathan MacKinnon, who didn't blow up until his fifth season. Some all-world prospects like Bedard and Connor McDavid take the league by storm immediately, but that is very rare. Many of the best players in the NHL take a few years to get their bearings.

Perhaps a better comparable for Cooley than Hughes is the other underperforming phenom I want to dig into today, Trevor Zegras (ANA).

Cooley looks even better in the HP model than Zegras, but both of these players are basically slam dunk stars-in-the-making. But why, then, is Zegras on a 22-point pace this year as he approaches his 200-game Breakout on the heels of two 60+-point seasons?

The short answer is that he has not yet been fully healthy in 2023-24. He played 12 games out of the gates (two points) before shutting it down in early-November with a "lower-body injury" that did not have a clear recovery timeline. This was the first time he had ever dealt with a longer-term injury, and the mental component to sitting out was understandably challenging.

This the first time Trevor Zegras has ever had a long-term injury. Said it was really tough for him mentally, especially having to sit at home while the team was on the road:#FlyTogether pic.twitter.com/mrXM93SlUb

— Derek Lee (@Derek_Lee27) December 22, 2023

Trevor Zegras hopes to be back in the lineup tomorrow: "Not sure."
Says he feels a lot better now than he did when he was playing at the beginning of the season and that his injury was a tough one with no real timeline.#FlyTogether

— Derek Lee (@Derek_Lee27) December 22, 2023

From a ruthless fantasy perspective, nagging injuries that impact a player's performance can be a gold mine if you can convince a fellow owner to panic and sell low. That was always unlikely to happen with a player of Zegras' caliber, however, and it became even more unlikely when he scored this cheeky, effortless-looking Michigan in his first game back from injury against Seattle. Ridiculous.

TREVOR ZEGRAS HIT THE MICHIGAN IN HIS FIRST GAME BACK FROM INJURY pic.twitter.com/fCkK0P8C3D

— Nasty Knuckles (@NastyKnuckles) December 24, 2023

Looking under the hood, Zegras is truly on the cusp of stardom. He has played 195 NHL games, his last two campaigns pushed up against the 70-point mark, and the talent around him is headed straight upwards. The young core in Anaheim consists of Zegras, Troy Terry, Mason McTavish, Leo Carlsson, Mintyukov, Sasha Pastujov, Jamie Drysdale, Olen Zellweger, Tristan Luneau, and Lukas Dostal. This group is undoubtedly going to be successful; it is just a matter of time.

A 25% boost on Zegras' career-high to date would put him at 84 points—above a point per game. For context, that would have placed him between Auston Matthews and Steven Stamkos in last year's scoring race. Bonafide number-one center production. Looking under the hood, while he has some defensive warts—especially this year—he is shaping up to be a relatively complete impact player, especially on offence.

The three-year gap between him and Cooley is apparent here. While Zegras actually has a much worse defensive rating than the rookie, he has a more significant impact on offense and is doing so against stiffer competition. Even struggling with an injury, Zegras has posted some of the best play-driving metrics on the Ducks.

He is stapled at the hip to the team's other top forward star, Terry, and will be given all the power play time and offensive zone deployment he can handle. In fantasy, this is officially your last chance to acquire his services before his price becomes truly absurd. Given the poor production on paper and the frustration of having him on IR for the last month, maybe his owner in one of your leagues will be getting a bit impatient with him. Again, though, that Michigan was extremely inconvenient for those of us scheming to buy low on the young Duck.

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Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @beegare for more prospect content and fantasy hockey analysis.