Oilers January NHLE - Scoring Depth Has Disappeared

When we tallied up the final NHLE numbers for the 2010-11 season, the Oilers had seven forward prospects with an equivalency of 30 points or better and that didn't include Tyler Pitlick or Teemu Hartikainen. This season, the scoring depth has disappeared. Linus Omark will still score 40-50 points a season in th NHL for someone, but Robby Dee, Liam Reddox and Alexei Mikhnov all moved on. The remaining prospects have somehow simultaneously fallen into a slump.

For a complete look at all of the Oilers' prospects and their NHL numbers, we can use Gabriel Desjardins' NHL Equivalency. Gabe's methodologies are described on his translations page:

One way to evaluate the difficulty of one league relative to another is to examine the relative performance of players who have played in both leagues. Players rarely play significant time in two leagues in the same year, but they often play in one league in one year and in another the next. As long as a player’s skill level is approximately constant over this two year period, the ratio of his performance in each league can be used to estimate the relative difficulty of the two leagues.

After the jump is the full list of skating prospects with their NHL Equivalency and full season projections.

• The other 30-point forwards - Anton Lander, Curtis Hamilton, Ryan Martindale - have collapsed. Hamilton and Martindale moved into the professional ranks and haven't been able to adjust. Anton Lander was rushed to the NHL and has struggled.
• Tobias Rieder, #20 in our Top 25 Under 25, has stepped into the void with an NHLE of 31. Through improvement or attrition, Rieder is now the best goal-scoring prospect in the organization.
  
• Though Hartikainen hasn't dominated the NHL as expected, his play hasn't fallen off - his NHLE of 24 is a point better than his 2010-11 season-ending total.

• Though there are three first-round picks and three second-round picks on the blueline in the organization, the leading scorers are a pair of fourth-round picks and a fifth-round pick. Gernat and Blain are still years away, but Bigos may be close to contributing at the NHL level.
• Oscar Klefbom still doesn't have a point on the season. At some point he has to accidentally get an assist off of his skate, right?
• Dillon Simpson's totals have increased through each month of the season. Beginning with October, his totals have been 0 --> 12 --> 15 -->16.