FanPost

Jesper Boqvist's historic Even Strength production suggests that he's even better than we thought (plus a list of links to all his 2018-19 points)

Here's the list of links to Boqvists's highlights. Especially cool plays are listed with a "!" and highlight-reel plays are listed with a "!!"

The bulk of my write-up (which can also be found here and on the Devils subreddit, with better formatting) deals with statistics, but Boqvist's highlights demonstrate some skills that should be mentioned. He's one of the fastest players in the Devils organization, and his acceleration is astounding; this play is a good example of how quickly he can reach top speed. He's also got good vision, good passing, and a good shot. He has a tendency to glide, but he only doesn't need to do more than glide to keep up with most plays.

With that out of the way, here's my write-up:

Jesper Boqvist missed the cut for Sweden's World Championship roster, ending a season that saw the winger establish himself as one of Sweden's best players.

A second-round draftee from 2017, Boqvist scored 35 points in Sweden's top league. That was tied for 11th-best among forwards, and tied for 1st among players who were less than 20 years old when the season started.

This All-Situations production is promising, but it's at Even Strength that Boqvist established himself as one of the better Swedish prospects in recent memory.

Boqvist's 28 Even Strength points were tied for 2nd in the SHL, just one point shy of the league lead. That kind of dominance for a u-20 player is more than just rare: it is unprecedented. The SHL has tracked Even Strength points for the last 19 seasons; before Boqvist, no u-20 forward had ever ranked in the top 4 over a full season. The only other u-20 players who have reached the top 5 are Elias Pettersson (at 18 years old) and Henrik Zetterberg (at 19 years old).

Boqvist's 2nd-place finish was lucky in some ways-- 28 EV points would rank in the 4-10 range for most seasons --but he was remarkably unfortunate in other ways. Between slumping linemates and a team that couldn't score at Even Strength, Boqvist had less to work with than almost every SHL star of the 21st century.

Brynas was last in the SHL with 76 Even Strength goals, and Boqvist scored or assisted on 36.84% of them. In the last 10 SHL seasons, only 7 players have factored into a higher percentage of their team's EV goals over a full year. All of them were at least 23 years old to start those seasons, 4 years older than Boqvist was in September 2018

In addition to his terrible team, Boqvist dealt with linemates who didn't perform especially well at Even Strength. Although Boqvist ranked in the top 2 for EV points among SHL forwards, he was the only forward on his team who ranked higher than 34th.

That has not happened before in Boqvist's lifetime.

In fact, SHL forwards rarely even reach the top 5 in EV points without serious help. In the last 19 seasons, there have only been 8 other instances of a top 5 forward who was their team's only forward in the top 30.

Given the lack of offense around him, Boqvist's Even Strength production was arguably the most impressive in the SHL this season. Not bad for a player who was younger than 202 out of the 222 other SHL players who appeared in at least 40 games this year.

Marked as a boom-or-bust player in his draft year, Boqvist's trajectory provides an emphatic "boom." He mauled one of the world's best hockey leagues at Even Strength, and it's only a matter of time before he's on an NHL top 6.

(Disclaimer: Most of those statistics were counted by hand using the statistics listed on shl.se. I double-checked them, but there might still be mistakes)

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