Juraj Slafjkovsky Is Taking a Step This Season

Juraj Slafjkovsky is having a good season. Having watched him for a while now I see growth in his game. It’s easy to look at his points and see he’s on pace to have another 50-point season but there’s more going on with the player.

He will turn 21 at the end of the month and I’ve always said that bigger players can take some time to put it all together so that all checks out here.

Slafkovsky hasn’t taken too many penalties this year. The bigger improvement in his game is the penalties drawn. According to Instat, he’s drawn 13 penalties. I don’t know how many of them turned into goals but they all turned into scoring chances on the power play and that’s great.

The power forward is up to 1.77 hits per game average. That checks out. He has won 43% of his puck battles, that’s below where he will be in a few years. He’s not there yet physically and when that part arrives in full force, watch out.

His two-way game is starting to come around. The coaching staff is now giving him 21% defensive zone starts and I can see that growing a bit next season. That’s a positive sign that plus/minus doesn’t always tell.

As we saw yesterday, he can pick the top corner from a distance. But when I look at his shot map, the place on the map with his most expected goals is up the gut, just off-center and around 12 feet away. That’s not surprising considering how good his shot is and how hard it is to get around the net in the NHL these days.

His development is on schedule.