This week on Frozen Tool Forensics we are going to be digging into the young guns. We will be looking at their current production and giving some perspective on whether what they are doing is sustainable for those trying to make some short term decisions, but by and large the bigger question for these guys is beyond the next few games or weeks. They are the future of the NHL after all.

We certainly can't start this list without mentioning Macklin Celebrini; putting up a 120-point pace as a 19-year-old is just exceptional, and it took Connor McDavid four seasons to pace for 120 points. There are a couple of underlying numbers we can quibble about. For example, Celebrini's team’s five on five shooting percentage is over 15 percent, which is quite high. As a comparison McDavid has never finished a season over 11.3 percent and Nikita Kucherov's highest career number is 12.9 so far. So sure, maybe the 19-year-old won't finish the season with 120 points, but he will end with an elite season, and there is really nothing to suggest he won't continue to be elite.

Connor Bedard is having an excellent rebound season after not taking the step many were hoping for in his second season. Like with Celebrini there are a couple of small indicators that maybe the 20-year-old is performing a little better than we might expect, but ultimately even if he were to drop to a 95- to 100-point season, I don't think fantasy managers would be complaining and he still is looking like the star we were hoping for.

Leo Carlsson had an absolutely torrid pace to start the season with multi-point outings more often than not. He slowed a little during November, but still had 36 points in 26 games through December 1. Since then he, and really the entire Anaheim team, has crashed back to earth. Carlsson has seven points in his last 18 games and is now hurt. Taken all together, the 80-point pace actually looks pretty much right. Carlsson has seen an additional three minutes of ice time on average from 2024-25, almost a minute of that on the power-play and is seeing career high shot rates. If anything, his underlying numbers are starting to look a little low. Assuming Anaheim rights the ship, and they have now won five in a row so it is starting to look like they will, Carlsson should be a big part of the production when he returns and should be able to sustain something close to a point per game.

Ivan Demidov is an interesting case here. He is putting up a 71-point pace as a rookie with about two minutes less ice time than anyone else on this list and is shooting almost a full shot less per game. His 15 minutes is almost six minutes less than Celebrini's 21. He is doing it through an impressive run of assists, which is not necessarily what was expected of him coming into the league. He is getting mostly second line deployment with Juraj Slafkovsky and Oliver Kapanen who have both been on scoring heaters. Therein lies a bit of the problem here. Almost all of the underlying numbers for Demidov indicate that this 70-point pace is going to be hard to maintain. Since December 20th Slafkovsky has scored 10 goals in 16 games with only 26 shots. That is a 38 percent conversion rate and only about a shot and a half per game. Kapanen's production has already dried up. Demidov does have the advantage of being on that top power play in Montreal, so it is not all bad news, but something is going to have to shift for Demidov to end the season with a 70-point pace.

Will Smith has seen increases across the board and is setting career highs (not that hard in his second season) for essentially every stat we track. When your linemate is putting up a 120-point pace it is a little hard to not at least get in on some of that action, but Smith is involved in the play as well, upping his shot rates to 2.4 per game and increasing his points participation rates. Like with a lot of these players the numbers indicate that a 70-point pace might be a little too hot right now, but only just barely. Obviously if Celebrini slows down to any degree that is likely going to impact Smith as well, but it seems safe to say that Smith has arrived.

Beckett Sennecke is an interesting case here. Like most of Anaheim he surged at the start of the season, but in recent weeks it has felt like he is the only one still doing much of anything. He has not quite been managing the heights of some of his peers here, but he is a rookie and was definitely behind a few guys in the depth chart to start the season. With his consistent production and a few injuries, he is now getting closer to 20 minutes a night in January and more consistently above 50 percent of the power-play time. The lines may shuffle a bit when Carlsson, Troy Terry, and Mason McTavish return to the lineup but Sennecke seems to be a lock in the top six which bodes well for maintaining his current production.

We also had to include Matthew Schaefer who, despite slowing down a bit from a very impressive start, is still the top D on this list and performing very well on Long Island. He started the season with seven points in his first six games and 15 points over his first 18 games (a 68-point pace). Since then, he has a much more modest 19 points in 32 games (a 49-point pace). Given he is a rookie we don't have any of his own data to compare to, but he is seeing more than 24 minutes a night on average, almost 70 percent of the team's power play, and shooting 2.5 times per game. It still looks like some of his production has been a little too high – most defensemen don't sustain a 10 percent shooting percentage – but until we get a little more data we won't know for sure what to expect from him. It usually takes defensemen a little while to find their footing in the NHL, but Schaefer has hit the ground running as an 18-year-old. So sure, while we can pick a little at his current pace, he already seems to be living up to his first overall draft pick status. 

That is all for this week.

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