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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Now that the regular season has concluded and we are all waiting impatiently for playoff hockey to begin, it is time to revisit my Calder Trophy predictions from back in the summer for the 2023-24 campaign. Here were my Top 25 candidates for the top rookie award, including their final stat lines and rank among NHL rookies by points per game (min. 20 games):

1st: Connor Bedard (CHI): 61 points in 68 NHL games, 0.90 points per game

2nd: Logan Stankoven (DAL): 14 in 24, 0.58

3rd: Brock Faber (MIN): 47 in 82, 0.57

4th: Luke Hughes (NJD): 47 in 82, 0.57

5th: Adam Fantilli (CBJ): 27 in 49, 0.55

6th: Logan Cooley (ARI): 44 in 82, 0.54

7th: Connor Zary (CGY): 34 in 63, 0.54

8th: Leo Carlsson (ANA): 29 in 55, 0.53

t-10th: Marco Rossi (MIN): 40 in 82, 0.49

t-10th: Luke Evangelista (NAS): 39 in 80, 0.49

15th: Matthew Knies (TOR): 35 in 80, 0.44

18th: Tyson Foerster (PHI): 33 in 77, 0.43

20th: Bobby Brink (PHI): 23 in 57, 0.40

24th: Ridley Grieg (OTT): 26 in 72, 0.36

26th: Olen Zellweger (ANA): 9 in 26, 0.35

31st: Simon Nemec (NJD): 19 in 60, 0.32

39th: Tye Kartye (SEA): 20 in 77, 0.26

44th: David Jiricek (CBJ): 10 in 43, 0.23

Prospects in the AHL

Mavrik Bourque (DAL): 76 in 70 AHL games, 1.09 *led AHL

Brandt Clarke (LAK): 44 in 48 AHL, 0.92

Jiri Kulich (BUF): 45 in 56 AHL, 0.80

Shane Wright (SEA): 45 in 58 AHL, 0.78

Jakob Pelletier (CGY): 12 in 17 AHL, 0.71 *injured in NHL preseason

Joakim Kemell (NAS): 40 in 65 AHL, 0.62

Simon Edvinsson (DET): 30 in 53 AHL, 0.57

Results

All 25 candidates I identified for the Calder performed very well in 2023-24, in either the NHL or AHL, and there were no huge misses. Hooray!

As I pointed out back in November, the biggest oversights were probably Pavel Mintyukov (ANA) and Matthew Poitras (BOS), both of whom stepped up in a big way this year and cemented themselves as important pieces for their teams moving forward. I was skeptical that they could jump straight into the NHL from Junior and excel right away, but that's more or less exactly what they did.

Another miss was 9th overall Pavel Dorofeyev (VGK), who put up the same scoring pace as he did in 18 games a year ago but over a larger sample size of 47 games. Has he shown enough to finally stick with Vegas next year? I think so.

Dorofeyev was the only miss inside the top ten. Other strong finishers who I did not see coming back in the summer included Dmitry Voronkov (CBJ, 13th with 0.45), Sam Malinski (COL, 16th with 0.43), Hendrix Lapierre (WAS, 17th, 0.43), Zach Benson (BUF, 19th, 0.42), Joshua Roy (MTL, 21st, 0.39), Valtteri Puustinen (PIT, 22nd, 0.38), Martin Pospisil (CGY, 23rd, 0.38), and Zack Bolduc (STL, 25th, 0.36).

The Big Three: Bedard, Faber, Hughes

At this point, the Calder debate has boiled down to Connor Bedard (CHI), Brock Faber (MIN), and Luke Hughes (NJD), with most pundits backing either Bedard or Faber. All three players had incredible years and are primed for all-star careers.

Faber was easily the biggest surprise, as he was a shutdown defender with modest offensive totals in college who had not yet auditioned at the AHL level. I wrote about his year back in February, attempting to answer the question: how could we have seen this coming? Because no one did. I included him in the Top 25 list but envisioned him throwing his hat in the ring with stout defensive play but falling short of 20 points—much like 2002-03 Barret Jackman (STL).

He wasn't handed the reins of the Minnesota power play until past the 20-game mark. How many more PPPs might he have added to his total of 16 with that added exposure? He took on other teams' best players all year and performed admirably, falling just shy of averaging 25 minutes per game—over a minute more than Owen Power did as a rookie a year ago, for reference. It was a two-way masterclass, and the argument is there for him to be handed the award this year over its more likely recipient, Bedard.

I will let others dig further into this debate for now and focus instead on some intriguing storylines with this rookie crop beyond The Big Three.

Overhyped Rookie Goalies: Levi, Wolf, Wallstedt

Preseason Calder lists were incredibly high on several rookie goalies coming into 2023-24: Devon Levi (BUF), Dustin Wolf (CGY), and Jesper Wallstedt (MIN). In 2022-23, Logan Thompson (VGK) and Stuart Skinner (EDM) came out of nowhere to receive Calder votes by the end of the year, an improbable outcome given their teams' situations heading into that campaign. Plus, both Thompson and Skinner were older (24 and 26, respectively) and had a solid amount of AHL experience under their belts.

"The Big Three" rookie goalies mentioned above were all younger with limited AHL experience (especially Levi), so I chose to omit them from the ranking, writing that "the lack of goalies on this list is not a slight to the next generation…but rather a reflection of the uncertainty and extended timelines of that position." Dobber has repeatedly pointed out over the years that goalies don't put up fantasy-worthy numbers before their mid-20s, almost ever. Carey Price (MTL) and Carter Hart (PHI) are two of the only ones to do so in the last 25 years. So the odds were certainly stacked against Levi, Wolf, and Wallstedt doing so.

Indeed, all three finished with subpar stats despite gaining valuable NHL experience:

Levi: 0.899 SV%, 3.10 GAA (23 games)

Wolf: 0.893 SV%, 3.16 GAA (15 games)

Wallstedt: 0.897 SV%, 3.01 GAA (3 games)

Instead, Pyotr Kochetkov (CAR), Samuel Ersson (PHI), Joel Hofer (STL), Lukas Dostal (ANA), and Joseph Woll (TOR) took advantage of various injuries and absences to further establish themselves at the NHL level. Ersson seized a turbulent net in Philly and nearly carried the Flyers to the playoffs, while Kochetkov put up a very impressive 0.911 and 2.33 while powering a strong Canes team to 23 wins. Those two will likely garner some Calder consideration but do not have a realistic shot at overtaking any of The Big Three.

Takeaway: don't try to predict the next Patrick Roy. Just employ Zero G and hope you get lucky.

The Rookie Wall: Benson, Korchinski, Cooley

The 82-game regular season in the NHL is quite the step up from the 68 games of the three CHL leagues and especially the 34 games of the NCAA. The "rookie wall" is a common phenomenon encountered by first-year players, where they come out of the gates hot but then slow down as the grind continues: game after game after game after game.

This year, Zach Benson and Kevin Korchinski made the jump directly out of the WHL, while Logan Cooley opted to join the Coyotes instead of re-upping with the U of Minnesota for a second year. While all three showed up on the highlight reels quite often early in the year, they seemed to drop off a bit as the campaign dragged on. Benson's shot rate fell off a cliff in the third quarter, Korchinski put up only four points over 36 mid-season games, and Cooley put up 16 in 40 mid-season games after starting strong with 13 in 21.

That said, all three finished the year on high notes: Q4 was the strongest stretch of the year for Benson (12 in 20, 27 shots) and especially Cooley (15 in 21, 48 shots), while Korchinski matched his Q1 production in Q4 (5 in 20, 21 shots) with about half as much PP time as he had previously. That is nearly a 60-point pace from Cooley with 2.3 shots per game—fantasy-worthy numbers even in one-year leagues. And he did that with nearly two and a half fewer minutes per game with the man advantage: 3:26 (Q1) vs. 1:08 (Q4).

Look for a big year in 2024-25 from Cooley in particular, with all three players fully hitting their stride halfway through 2025-26.

Revisiting Jiricek vs. Nemec

Prior to this year, it felt like the majority of fantasy managers were much higher on David Jiricek than Simon Nemec.

In October 2022, for instance, Caleb Kerney at Dobber Prospects concluded that "Jiricek is clearly the best choice of the two. His shot gives you the feeling that he could really pop for points in the coming years. Even if he doesn't have the same appeal as Nemec, his peripherals could be the tiebreaker as he develops his aggressive style in the NHL and increases his shots and hits. David Jiri-checks all the boxes, Simon Nemec does not."

That same month, Nemec sat 6th on Dobber's Top Prospect Defensemen ranking while Jiricek sat 18th. A year later in November 2023, Jiricek had risen to 5th while Nemec was 7th. Fast forward to February 2024 and Nemec is 1st while Jiricek is 5th. On the NHL Rank King app, which provides a user-voted ranking, Nemec sits 4th among prospect defenders while Jiricek sits 6th.

While they each played a solid chunk of games this year, their deployment was so different that it makes comparison difficult: Nemec played 20 minutes a night against relatively tough competition, while Jiricek was heavily sheltered and used in a more offensive role. So although Jiricek drove play more effectively, Nemec was asked to do a lot more.

The main takeaway for me is that both players remain among the best young prospects at their position, and comparison is more of a fun intellectual exercise than anything. Over these limited sample sizes, however, the clear edge in peripherals that Kerney (and many others) anticipated for Jiricek has not yet emerged. Nemec put up 1.22 shots and 1.75 blocks per game, which are decent rates, but otherwise both players posted below-one rate stats for shots, PIMs, hits, and blocks.

The bigger question here is: does Jiricek have a future in Columbus? He was quite vocal about his displeasure after a mid-season demotion back to the AHL. From an Athletic article back in January: "I played good hockey in the NHL. I'm an NHL player right now. That's my opinion, that I should be in the NHL right now. I see guys from the same draft, like Simon Nemec (in New Jersey) and (Kevin) Korchinski (in Chicago) … they get a chance on the power play. They play a ton of minutes in the NHL. Those are different teams, so different situations, but I can compare with them. I just want a chance to play like that."

Under the hood, the results were seemingly outstripped by his confidence.

Lots of drama around Jiricek and his playing time/demotion in CBJ.

Results are right on that fringe, but I'd highlight the penalties as something the coach probably doesn't love, especially hooks/holds/trips from a player who doesn't otherwise play particularly physical. #CBJ pic.twitter.com/p9rLZw4akl

— JFresh (@JFreshHockey) January 28, 2024

It is rare, in my experience, to hear a young player speaking so directly about their frustrations like this, which is a big red flag in my books regarding his future in Columbus. This is definitely a storyline to follow over the summer, because the Blue Jackets don't necessarily have a clear place for Jiricek to take on his desired role, given that he is blocked by Zach Werenski, Damon Severson, Ivan Provorov, Adam Boqvist, and Jake Bean (to greater or lesser extents) with Denton Mateychuk on the way.

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