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In an odd twist of fate, John Tavares and Rob Schremp each played exactly 247 games in the OHL. Schremp started playing junior much older than Tavares did, but he was nonetheless a big scorer, notching 384 points overall, including 145 points in 57 games in his final season, leading the OHL in both goals and assists.
The Edmonton Oilers drafted him 25th overall in 2004. Since then, he has played precisely seven games at the NHL level and, barring a sudden uptick in skills, looks to be an AHL lifer. Schremp had some off-ice issues before starting his pro career, but if we knew nothing about him, was there any reason to suspect on draft day that he might not be good enough for an NHL career?
We know very little about player usage in junior hockey – how much ice time star players get, how much of it’s on the power play and how much time is spent against the other team’s top lines. We can hazard a guess using Jonathan Willis’ simplified Quality of Competition metric. All you need to know to calculate it is point totals for every player at 5-on-5, as well as who was on the ice for both teams when each goal was scored. (It is reported here as a league-wide percentile as opposed to a raw number.) Applying this method to Schremp’s junior career, we see an interesting pattern:
Rob Schremp, Born: 7/1/1986
5v5 Stats Age GP G A1 A2 +/- GF GA QoC PCT 5v5
2002-03 16.50 65 13 16 3 -5 38 43 71.6 43.2
2003-04 17.50 63 12 5 8 +21 34 13 40.8 33.3
2004-05 18.50 60 13 15 6 +30 45 15 39.5 37.8
2005-06 19.50 56 14 14 4 +26 46 20 62.1 22.1
In Schremp’s first junior season, he actually faced a reasonably high level of competition – though nowhere near the top on his team – and posted a poor +/-. He also didn’t get 100% of his team’s power-play time, and ended up with (just!) 74 points in 65 games. However, that was it for Schremp’s defensive responsibilities – in his next three seasons, his coach sheltered him from opposing scorers and gave him as much PP time as anybody in the league. His +/- improved dramatically and he lit up the scoreboard in 5-on-4 situations.
Perhaps this usage does not seem unreasonable – if you have an offensively-skilled player on your roster, why not use him in a role where he can generate offense for you? Let’s look at how John Tavares was used:
John Tavares, Born: 9/20/1990
5v5 Stats Age GP G A1 A2 +/- GF GA QoC PCT 5v5
2005-06 15.28 62 25 6 5 +4 43 39 94.5 46.8
2006-07 16.28 64 29 15 7 +17 58 41 99.7 38.1
2007-08 17.28 56 18 19 8 +18 54 36 94.4 38.1
2008-09 18.28 56 27 12 3 +6 52 46 99.5 40.4
It can be difficult to compare Quality of Competition across teams and seasons, but there’s no doubt that in every single one of his junior seasons, Tavares played against the other team’s top lines, generally drawing the toughest assignments on his team. Despite being more than a year younger than Schremp at every step, he put up almost 50% more points in 5-on-5 play than Schremp did.
Presumably Schremp’s OHL usage was obvious at the time and the Oilers gambled that his offensive skills – on the PP at the very least – would translate to the NHL. It’s hard to know how qualitative scouting matches up with quantitative analysis, but the numbers seem to be in Tavares’ favor and not in Schremp’s.
Gabriel Desjardins is an author of Puck Prospectus and runs the statistical hockey site behindthenet.ca. You can contact him at info at behindthenet.ca. | 
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