Who are you, Dustin Penner?

When projecting ahead to the coming season, a big question mark that affects a lot of teams is the possible emergence of young players. How well will they step into bigger roles? How can we project success or shortcomings?

For me, one of the bigger mysteries this coming year is the big brute Dustin Penner. Penner, interestingly enough, joins Andy McDonald and Chris Kunitz as players the Ducks signed who never got drafted, and like the other two, has shown signs of being a success. He’s built like a horse, has shown decent hands and offensive zone awareness, and hasn’t proven to be too much a liability on the backend, either.

Even more than the other rookies, however, Penner’s season was really an up-and-down one between big-league Anaheim and the AHL-affiliate Portland Pirates. Here’s the up-and-down story:

Dates	Team	Level	Season	Games	G-A-Pts	Pts/Gm
10/5/05 – 10/10/05	Anaheim	NHL	Regular	0	0-0-0	0.00
10/11/05 – 11/23/05	Portland	AHL	Regular	16	11-9-20	1.25
11/24/05 – 12/15/05	Anaheim	NHL	Regular	6	2-2-4	0.67
12/16/05 – 1/26/06	Portland	AHL	Regular	18	15-18-33	1.83
1/27/06 – 2/14/06	Anaheim	NHL	Regular	9	2-1-3	0.33
2/15/06 – 2/26/06	Portland	AHL	Regular	6	4-4-8	1.33
2/27/06 – 3/10/06	Anaheim	NHL	Regular	4	0-0-0	0.00
3/11/06 – 4/15/06	Portland	AHL	Regular	17	9-14-23	1.35
4/16/06 – 4/26/06	Portland	AHL	Playoffs	4	2-3-5	1.25
4/27/06 – 5/28/06	Anaheim	NHL	Playoffs	13	3-6-9	0.69
5/29/06 – 5/30/06	Portland	AHL	Playoffs	1	2-0-2	2.00
TOTAL	Portland	AHL	Regular	57	39-45-84	1.47
TOTAL	Portland	AHL	Playoffs	5	4-3-7	1.40
TOTAL	Anaheim	NHL	Regular	19	4-3-7	0.37
TOTAL	Anaheim	NHL	Playoffs	13	3-6-9	0.69

(Remember, four of Penner’s NHL playoff assists came from passing to the scoring machine Joffrey Lupul during the Colorado series.)

So what kind of expectations should be placed on Penner for this coming year, or more appropriately, what should those expectations be based on? His AHL success? The dozen-or-so NHL playoff games?

Duck fans on the message boards (bless their little hearts) seem to be quite optimistic as to next year’s Penner, penciling him in at top line and projecting lofty point totals. I guess I agree that Penner’s going to be ‘better’ next year with full-time NHL duty, but of all the Duck forwards not named Chistov, he’s the guy with the thinnest and most scattered previous-year stats to use as a basis.

I dunno, anyone care to make a guess how good Dustin should be this year? Or, if you’re as stumped as I am, maybe just a mention of what impresses you about the big kid.