Patrick O'Sullivan

In Junior, O'Sullivan was the kind of player who took over games at both ends of the ice. He was always an under rated defensive player (even his first year when the Ice Dogs were terrible), and played a regular shift on the PK. His offensive skills were also top notch which made it all the more surprising why he dropped so far in the draft (#56 OV in 2003).

His first year in the AHL was very impressive, which saw him total 78-47-46-93 (GP-G-A-PTS) as a 20 year old in the 05-06 season.

He was traded that summer to Los Angeles and split time in the NHL and AHL. His AHL numbers took a drastic hit as he put up 41-18-21-39. This represents a tremendous drop in production. His goals dropped 0.11 GPG, his assists dropped 0.7 APG. You don't expect this sort of drop from a player at the AHL level as they get older.

The question is, what happened?

Part of the answer might be found in a teammate of O'Sullivan's in Roman Voloshenko. At the age of 19 he put up 60 points in 69 AHL games, which is damn impressive. He followed that up with 30 points in 76 AHL games the following season, a significant drop (and has since toiled in Russia playing in limited games). This raises an honest question of how much of their offense was based on the roster at the time?

There were several players who had career seasons that year, including both Kirby Law and Erik Westrum who finished 1-2 in league scoring that year. Kirby Law had a 37 point jump from his next best season and Erik Westrum saw a 56 point jump.

Defenceman Curtis Murphy was an AHL vet who had a pretty good track record of producing offense in the AHL, but even he saw a 13 point jump on his next best offensive season.

Matt Foy saw a significant jump in terms of his own production, scoring 40 points in 51 games after 25 in 69 the year before. Peter Olvecky has had just one better season than his 05-06 season (and it wasn't much better) and veteran Rem Murray was in the middle of his first season back after his short retirement.

All in all, it seems to be a season that saw a lot of things go very well for a lot of players on that Houston team, and perhaps that may have set expectations high for what O'Sullivan could be. That 93 in 78 sticks out a lot more than the rest of his numbers do. He's had huge issues coming close to his NHLE numbers from that season, but he's been significantly closer to the ones from his 06-07 season (39 in 41).

His goal scoring is perhaps the most worrisome out of everything. He's a shooter, but they don't seem to be translating into goals. I'd like to go through his shot chart (at least with the Oilers) to find out where he's getting his shots from. His shooting % was the 2nd worst in the NHL amongst all forwards who got 200 or more shots (Gomez was worse). The next worse was Mikael Samuelsson who shot 7.4%.

At this point in time, the Samuelsson comparison seems to be the most valid. He gets the puck going the other way but can't translate it into GF for his team. Not that it's horrible, but it is quite the price to pay when you are talking a near $3mil cap hit for him.

At this point it's really hard to see O'Sullivan's offense ever translating from junior or his first big year in the AHL. In his pro career that year seems to the be the biggest aberration, as opposed to the one to potentially base his potential off of. He's never really been close to that in either his NHLE numbers or in his time back down in the AHL.

All that being said, he does a pretty good job at getting the puck going the other way and if he could ever translate those shots into goals (whether for himself or for others), it would do a hell of a job in helping his goal differential. I don't think he's going to be the "one shot scorer" Oiler fans crave, nor do I think he'll even be the 30 goal guy they crave... but he's a useful if not overpaid hockey player who still has time to grow into an important part on this team.