Why Anthony Romani should intrigue Canucks fans

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The moment the Vancouver Canucks called out Anthony Romani’s name in the sixth round of the NHL Entry Draft in June, more than a few eyebrows were raised.

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Of course a player who led the Ontario Hockey League in goals should draw interest.

But the fact this was his second year of draft eligibility also spoke volumes.

He scored 58 goals, just the fourth OHL player under the age of 19 to ever do so. The other three, Patrick Kane, Steven Stamkos and John Tavares, were drafted first overall.

Let’s be clear: Romani is not some super-secret budding NHL superstar. He wouldn’t have slid down to 162nd overall if he were.

So who is he and how did he slide so far?

For starters, consider his draft year: He was one of the younger players on a very deep North Bay Battalion squad. His birthday is July 12, putting him well into the latter half of his draft-age cohort (Sept. 15 is the cutoff date for a given draft year.)

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He also didn’t see much key ice time that year.

Still, he managed to score 23 goals in his draft year, while rarely playing on the power play.

With a host of players before him on the Battalion depth chart departing before this season, Romani was handed a golden opportunity — and playing alongside two linemates in similar big-opportunity moments, he thrived.

His linemates, Dalyn Wakely and Owen Van Steensel, also exploded, each more than doubling their previous-season production.

Romani got his chance and he delivered.

But he remains a long shot — just look at the comparables Hockey Prospecting’s Byron Bader matched to Romani: Todd Simon, Rick Girard, Patrick Bartschi, Oleg Kvasha and Kristian Vesalainen.

Only Kvasha had an NHL career. Vesalainen did play in the NHL for Winnipeg for parts of three seasons, but is back in Finland now.

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Elite Prospects’ J.D. Burke sees a player who represents a shift in philosophy for the Canucks, more than anything.

“Romani isn’t the type of player the Canucks have drafted in past seasons, particularly in the later rounds. They tend to covet traits and measurables at the expense of production and skill, and it hasn’t exactly yielded much in the way of NHL talent,” he noted.

Romani isn’t big and isn’t a great skater, but he’s got excellent puck skills.

“He’s a cunning distributor of the puck, builds plays through professional patterns with deception and east-west movement, and pairs that skill with the ability to beat goaltenders clean from range,” Burke said.

He then highlighted what he knows of the Canucks’ analytics department: He used to work at CanucksArmy with Ryan Biech, who handles video and data analysis for the Canucks’ scouting department.

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Along with Biech and former CanucksArmy writer Jeremy Davis, Burke built a big-data player analysis model to help understand which kinds of players a prospect would be best matched to based on their performance at various levels, as well as their physical development.

Romani’s status as a second-year draft-eligible player actually helps him in his chances of making the NHL. There’s just more data to pull to build a projection of what his development curve might prove to be.

“One of the early findings Jeremy Davis revealed when all three of us worked together at CanucksArmy from his prospect analytics model (pGPS, short for Prospect Graduation Probability System) indicated that re-entries are actually more likely to than first-time draft-eligible skaters in the mid-to-late rounds,” Burke explained.

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“Ultimately, he probably won’t play because sixth-rounders basically never play, but he could develop into organizational depth or work as a trade chip at the deadline. That’s all you can ask for in that spot.”

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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