With Berkly Catton on the shelf for the foreseeable future, out week-to-week with an upper-body injury, it puts a pause to his much anticipated rookie season.
It was promising to see him out with a red sweater at morning skate on Sunday morning, but coach Lane Lambert said he’s still pretty far from a return.
20 games (well, 21 now) into his NHL career, the 19-year-old remains one of the youngest players in the league. Yet, it’s looking more and more like he will stay with the team for the entire season.
There are a lot of high hopes for Catton among Kraken faithful, with many thinking his playmaking abilities would pay dividends right away for a team that has struggled to find a consistent source of offense. In certain ways he has helped in this regard, but the player who once scored 54 goals in a season in the WHL has yet to find the back of the net as a pro, so the scoring touch hasn’t yet translated.
Obviously, the first 20 games are not going to define the next 20, the next 200 or an entire career. Not all development paths are created equal, but this is a large enough sample size to begin comparing and contrasting.
So, while his season is on pause, let’s take some time to compare Catton’s first 20 games with the other two Kraken first-rounders to reach that mark: Matty Beniers and Shane Wright.
Catton’s first 20
The Kraken had the option of sending Catton back to the Spokane Chiefs for another season, where he did not have much left to prove, or keeping him in the NHL for a full year and burning a season of his entry-level contract.
Drafted No. 8 overall by the Kraken in 2024, the decision to have him spend his first season in the pro ranks was a heavily calculated one by the front office and coaching staff, who felt it was in his best interest to stay in the NHL and learn the ropes a little earlier than normal.
Catton has experienced some ups and downs to start his NHL career. He came out of the gates hot with three assists in his first five games, including an assist in his debut.
But he went quiet over his next 15, recording only two helpers. He’s totaled 17 shots on goal so far with some quality chances, but he just hasn’t been able to finish.
He’s getting close, though, and gaining confidence along the way. Here’s one of those opportunities he had against the Islanders on Nov. 23.
Here’s another against Edmonton on Nov. 29. He seems to really like burning by teams with orange circular logos for whatever reason.
Catton has spent the majority of his young career playing on a line with Jordan Eberle and the aforementioned Wright, but he has also seen his fair share of different combinations—six in total, according to MoneyPuck.
He was averaging a little more than 12 minutes per night, with that number fluctuating game-to-game, as it often does for players his age.
Comparing it to Wright and Beniers
Wright, drafted No. 4 overall by the Kraken in 2022, split his first 20 NHL games across three seasons from 2022-23 to 2024-2025. He spent time in the OHL, AHL and at World Juniors between his NHL debut and reaching the 20-game mark.
When he was on the ice with the Kraken during those early stints, he produced at roughly the same pace he is producing at now, totaling five goals and two assists while getting about 11 minutes a game. It took Wright until the eighth game of his career to score his first NHL goal, memorably against Montreal.
While Wright hasn’t been the world-breaker he was hyped to be during his junior career, he has still developed into a solid NHL producer, with 63 points in 124 games.
Matty Beniers, meanwhile, is much more of an outlier when it comes to early-career production for the Kraken. His Rookie of the Year award and scoring in just his second ever game underscore that point.
Through his first 20 games, 10 at the end of the 2021-22 season and 10 in 2022-23, Beniers averaged nearly a point per game at seven goals and 10 assists. He was playing more than 18 minutes per night, a luxury that came when the Kraken were just starting out and building their foundation.
What’s to come…
In terms of production, it’s safe to say Catton’s first 20 games looked far more like Wright’s than Beniers’, although his path to 20 has been far more linear than that of Wright. While Catton is probably the most offensively gifted player of the three, it was always going to take something monumental to match Beniers’ first-year totals.
Many different factors play into these development paths. Top picks are always given plenty of runway, and Catton, like the rest of the Kraken’s first-rounders (all of whom are still under the age of 23), undoubtedly has way more time to become the player he was drafted to be. Benchmarks like these simply give context for what may come next.
So when he gets back, how do you think the next 20 games will look for Catton?
What caught my eye was his beautiful and smooth skating; his movements looked the most aesthetic among the whole team.
It seemed that his shots lacked power and unpredictability, as there were a few situations when his shots from dangerous areas were caught surprisingly easily. I think solving this problem would be the lowest hanging fruit for him, allowing him to participate in more plays. I hope this will be resolved naturally by gaining muscle mass. Extraordinary talented guy.
Unfortunately, analyzing the trajectories of all three of our main prospects once again highlighted how difficult the Kraken’s playbook is for our young players to progress.
Really? Other reliable players in the NHL just come out of the gates scoring their first few seasons, huh? Interesting. I wonder why it took Sam Bennett 9 seasons to get to 40, for example. Or Brock Nelson 6 seasons to get to 50. Nichushkin…7 seasons to 50. I’m sure it all had to do with their systems and not age or experience.
Lesson:
There are over 600 players in the NHL, and their development paths fall into many different patterns.
Choosing random particular examples while ignoring others that could point in a different direction.
If you want to build analogy reasoning case – you should at least choose relevant parameters for comparison.
The simplest approach would be to compare with similar peaks in previous years. This is not an perfect approach, as drafts vary in quality, players utilizes different style of play, and there is also a significant margin of error in selection. However, the average numbers will give a fairly indicative trend that can be used as a benchmark.
Homework:
Below are the second overall picks in the drafts over the past 25 years, so you can choose centers and compare them with Beniers based on the first 200 games stats (or less for the last 4 drafts). Then, please, come back and let us know whether your comment was relevant.
Michael Misa
Artyom Levshunov
Leo Carlsson
Simon Nemec
Matty Beniers
Quinton Byfield
Kaapo Kakko
Andrei Svechnikov
Nolan Patrick
Patrik Laine
Jack Eichel
Sam Reinhart
Aleksander Barkov
Ryan Murray
Gabriel Landeskog
Tyler Seguin
Victor Hedman
Drew Doughty
James van Riemsdyk
Jordan Staal
Bobby Ryan
Evgeni Malkin
Eric Staal
Kari Lehtonen
Jason Spezza
How does the team get to control who is available at #2 overall in any given draft? Your whole exercise, despite the contrived gravitas of the delivery, is flawed. But to your own point, “There are over 600 players in the NHL, and their development paths fall into many different patterns.”
There is no point in looking for blind spots in the proposed method; it is just one of many ways to try to analyze something based on verifiable premises. And, of course, it is not perfect, just like any other method.
I’m really didn’t get your idea of comparison Beniers/Wright/Catton with the exact trio of Bennet/Nelson/Nichushkin.
It gives you an excellent chance to propose your own model that better describes reality and is free from the shortcomings you have found. Please share it with us, I’d be happy to see smth more smart.
My point is it doesn’t matter in what order someone is selected or even comparing the production of 3 players who are 19-22 years old. If you look at, say, “reliable performers” in the league today, which may be players consistently producing at 40+ points the last several seasons, which is what you are really trying to get to, regardless of draft order, you see a broad range of production in their first 5-6 seasons.
Then what did you start arguing about?
“Unfortunately, analyzing the trajectories of all three of our main prospects once again highlighted how difficult the Kraken’s playbook is for our young players to progress.”
– Denis G
In any event, a lot of weight seems to be given to draft picks, when The Florida Panthers…”Of the 23 players to play at least one postseason game, 11 were signed in free agency, seven were acquired via trade, four were selected by Florida in the NHL Draft, and one was claimed off waivers. Nineteen of the 22 skaters have at least one goal in the playoffs and 21 at least one point.”
https://www.nhl.com/panthers/news/how-2025-stanley-cup-champion-panthers-were-built-x1902#:~:text=Eetu%20Luostarinen%2C%20C:%20Acquired%20from,assists)%20in%2021%20playoff%20games.
Those draft picks include their top two centers and top defenseman — why shouldn’t picks be weighted more heavily than free agents and trades?
How much “more heavily?” There are 23 players on the roster, and what’s happening on the ice when those guys aren’t playing ie one of them gets injured?
One argument one COULD make is they had Huberdeau and Weeger (drafted 3rd and 206th) and traded them to Calgary for Tkachuk.
I went and watched he last game with the chiefs and got to see him play against McKenna. Catton in my opinion was the best player on the ice but McKenna was around 2 years younger and was almost as good. The play traveled through both players every shift, they were the focal point of both teams offense.
One thing that stood out to me was how much time Catton spent on the ice, he was getting laid out almost every shift. Always got right back up and into the play but it made me wonder how he would deal with the physical play in the NHL. I believe we’ve seen this he often avoids plays where potential contact is coming, spinning and holding up instead of driving through, and he’s been knocked around a lot. He needs to build his frame a little more I don’t feel like he’s physically ready for the nhl, he’s surviving but it makes me nervous and it’s affecting his play.
He has the skills and will be a great player, he’s shown that he’s better in his natural position as has Shane. What exactly was the thought process behind just drafting centers and signing Chandler to a six year deal? Another topic…..
I don’t feel that we are playing a game that suits his skill set and that important to consider with comparison, he’s really a player that would be preforming much better in a more offensive system. Also very important to consider what Matty or Wright would look like if they were playing for LL during their rookie season. For that matter how anyone on this team is preforming under LL. We really are not comparing apples to apples (no assist pun intended).
It’s hard to compare his Kraken production with that of his time in the WHL. Partly because of the system and the relative skill leverls of the players, but also because of the ice time. He was getting top line “star” minutes in the WHL, fourth line time and duties now. I wonder how that might change if Lambert gave him a few games on the top line. They’re in such a bad spiral now that the playoffs look unlikely, so why not test it out?
You’d probably still need a coaching change to get him going, the dump the puck out dump get it to the corners grind away and wait for a mistake system is just not his game. It’s actually not any skilled players game. Sure put him on the top line top mins but it’s still impossible to compare him to Matty during his first season.
It’s interesting to expand the comparison to what I would call other “reliable performers” in the NHL and how they began their careers. Obviously, there are some players who come out guns a’blazin from the get go, but many others are 6-7 seasons before they hit any meaningful production.
Most of the analysis I’ve seen is that players typically reach their peaks around 27-28. So for those that enter the league as teenagers, somewhere between their 8th and 10th seasons (or twice as long as the Kraken have existed).
Then you have guys like Duchene and Wilson who really started piling it on at 30’ish.
The male brain (nervous system) is not fully developed until the age of 24. That’s one reason why it’s so difficult to predict the development of 17-18 year old kids in the draft.
Kraken / Avalanche tonight on TNT.
For those of us not attending the game it will be great for the Kraken to shock the TNT in studio panel with an amazing unpredictable victory.
Go Kraken!!!
I think an amazing unpredictable thing that is more likely to happen is the Kraken having fewer than 10 SOG for the entire game.
Gotta go and start my sage bonfire.
Barring no further injuries I can’t see Catton scoring more than 10 goals this year. He has to adjust to the speed of the game, the rough housing and LL is ⌚ ng his minutes closely.