Islanders Community Projection: Kyle Okposo

It's been brought up a few times here (by Hockey1919 for one) that the aggregate results of our postseason grades make it look like 75% of the team met or exceeded our expectations in 2009-10. Either we're soft graders or we expected the worst. (Can you blame an Islanders fan for either affliction?)

I'd rather the expectations game not be strictly counting-stats based, but for fun and to help guide us next summer we can do some individual player projection polls over the next few weeks. The central question being: What kind of stats do you think Player X will put up in 2010-11?

We'll start with one whose training camp shouldn't change our opinion: Kyle Okposo, who begins his third full season at age 22. For perspective, via a Hockey-Reference search of the last 10 years, here's a sampling of top right wings who played their third or fourth seasons at age 22 or 23:

A few things of note: Except for Ryan last year, all of these guys were on quite good teams, usually next to very good centers. Even Bobby Ryan's big season last year was at least mostly alongside two All-Stars.

Michalek is probably the scary one (for us) in that group, as his career has leveled off significantly and he's yet to match those 26 goals or 66 points in a single season. But I think it's fair to put a range out there like this. Our expectations may vary, but probably few of us would be surprised to see Okposo become a 30-goal guy at some point, even if he's yet to reach 20 goals in his first two seasons.

Is next season too soon to expect 30 from Okposo? Probably -- although he could very well get close. Does such a jump happen? Yes. Corey Perry put up 13 and 17 goals in his age 20 and 21 seasons before putting up the 29-goal, 70-game season mentioned above.

But for my caution here, I'm thinking not just of Okposo's own age, but also John Tavares's. If Tavares is going to get Okposo there as his center it likely won't be in JT's second season. No matter what, though, Okposo's shooting percentage of 9.1 through his first two-plus seasons will have to go up to something near the other guys on that list. We do know from summer reports that his finishing was a point of emphasis during summer training. We also know 7.6% (what he shot last year) is not up to the standard he's likely to put up as he matures.

Here are Okposo's stats through his first two-plus years. Ice time has increased, games increased, even-strength goals increased, and at least one of his linemates should have improved this year.

Now you tell us what you expect he'll put up this year. Later, I'll average out all the results. To make this work, in comments you should give me at minimum his G, A, Pts. But you might want to throw in a GP guess, too -- both to give us another data point and to force yourself into a little more realism. All explanations and storylines are welcome, but you can also make it as simple as:

77 GP, 27, 39, 66.

And so on...