The Copper & Blue's favorite prospect is eleven games into his sophomore season with KalPa of the SM-Liiga. After a rookie season that not only far surpassed any reasonable expectation of him based on draft position, he blew the doors off of the SM-Liiga and the KalPa record books. We previously looked at what can be expected of the youngster here, and this list of 19 year olds in the SM-Liiga can be used as a comparable list for this NHL-bound left wing.
Through his first 11 games, Teemu Hartikainen's boxscores look promising: 1G 5A - 6P. Comparing him to the chart, .545 points per game sits at the same level as Mikko Koivu.
I went through the translated box scores and his points break out thusly:
EV: 0G 2A - 2P
PP: 1G 3A - 4P
The goal scoring isn't there yet, but blame it on the bounces. Hartikainen has 25 shots through 11 games and 1 goal, a miserable 4% shooting percentage. Last year, in his record-setting season, he shot 12.9%, which was on the high end of what should be expected, but as we discussed, he plays in and around the paint, so he should be able to muster double digits. But it's early and luck rules early on. His shot rates are slightly down from last year though -- 2.568 shots / 20 mins as compared to 3.96 shots / 20 mins -- and KalPa has a new fellow named Andersson who shoots as much as Ovechkin, so perhaps there aren't enough pucks to go around.
Hartikainen is averaging 17:42 of total ice time per game, 5th among KalPa forwards and up from 13:03 last year, so his workload is increasing. From the box scores, we can see he's playing with the second line exclusively, and playing on the first power play unit.
View his game log here, at the SM-Liiga site.
His first split is encouraging. He's still shooting and he's playing more significant minutes. When his shooting percentage rebounds, he'll settle in the middle of above comparables list as he heads to the AHL.
EDIT: Originally, the stat comparison was made using the wrong column, It has since been corrected.