Mikael Pyyhtia found his way into 47 games for the Columbus Blue Jackets this season. This was a little bit of a surprise from a guy who was buried in the team's list of top prospects. Was it a mirage, or were we underrating him a little bit? The answer: it may have been a little bit of both.
This season might have honestly been exactly what we should have expected with Pyyhtia to begin with. In hindsight, it's pretty obvious. Don Waddell and Dean Evason were certainly on the same page when it came to call-ups, and their plan worked pretty well. We saw more contribution out of the recalls this year than we have in other recent seasons.
Rather than calling up top line players from the Cleveland Monsters to fill whatever hole was left open, they opted to bring in guys for specific roles. In the case of Mikael Pyyhtia, that meant starting the season with the Columbus Blue Jackets and earning recalls later in the year, as the team waded through injuries to its bottom-six forwards.
In a sense, Pyyhtia has become exactly what we predicted him to be in our write-ups over the last few years. He doesn't have the scoring ability to be a top prospect in one regard. In another, he's not a big, physical banger who is going to free up space and take over games that way. This is why we had him ranked fairly low (16th) on our prospects list last summer.
But, as a result of his reliable two-way game, he got a nice cup of coffee in the NHL this season. In 47 games played, he scored 3 goals, 7 points, added 6 penalty minutes and a -11 rating. He also blocked a lot of shots (39) - which tells us that the team didn't have the puck a lot when he was on the ice.
His deeper stats tell the tale a little further. Pyyhtia had a CORSI rating of around 40%; averaging just over 12 minutes per game, mostly at even strength and on the penalty kill. Those minutes were mostly spent in the defensive zone overall - which resulted in the team scoring just 14 goals with him on the ice, while surrendering 34.
This isn't to say he was a bad player. In fact, I thought he gave the team some really good minutes against tougher competition. This is all you need out of replacement level players - come in and be reliable on both sides of the puck, and Pyyhtia did that for the Blue Jackets this season.
In the end however, I was left with some concerns. Obviously, he wasn't very effective in the limited top-6 opportunities he was given. And, with an NHL that is heading back towards needing some size and physicality in your bottom-6, I have some concerns about rolling out a guy who is listed at 6'0" and 176 pounds.
Time will tell if he can parlay his NHL time from this season into more of a career in the league as we move ahead. But, if "all" he becomes is a depth option, that's also fine. He did the job well enough. Just keep the game simple and in straight lines.