As our Penguins cruise into the holiday break on the hockey equivalent of Santa’s sleigh (a 9-3-1 hot streak), I decided to take a gander at our individual production. I was scanning our scoring list on Hockey Reference when a name brought me to a screeching halt.
Drew O’Connor.
It wasn’t all that long ago (the summer of 2023 to be exact) that I posted an article comparing O’Connor to another rangy forward, Buffalo’s Tage Thompson. Before you shout me down or label me a fool or worse, there was some validity to my comparison.
A first-round pick of the Blues (26th overall in ’16), Thompson didn’t blossom into a super-scorer right away. On the contrary, over his first 145 big-league games, roughly the equivalent of two seasons, he managed just 18 goals and 35 points. As recently as the ’19-20 season he was splitting time between the NHL and AHL.
Then…BOOM.
Almost overnight Thompson emerged as a lethal goal-scorer, potting 38 goals in ’21-22 and a career-best 47 the following season.
Okay, so I didn’t quite envision O’Connor scaling those lofty heights.
