One guy getting some attention this Olympics is Norway's leading scorer, Patrick Thoresen. The one time Flyer/Oiler appeared in a 100 NHL games, put up marginal results and fled to Europe when no one stepped up to re-sign him.
He's knocked it out of the park over there. This season, he's managed 21 goals and 52 points in 53 games for Ufa of the KHL. He's 7th overall in scoring there.
Of course, maybe he's just one of those guys who can dominate in lower leagues but never make it over the hump in the NHL. Maybe, but if you look at his underlying numbers during his final season in the NHL, there's a suggestion he was already finding his feet on this side of the pond:
Corsi: +3.87
Rel Corsi: +12.8
QUAL COMP: +0.027
ESP/60: 1.15
PDO: 93.2 (!)
Aside from the scoring rate, those are strong advanced stats for a guy who was in his second year in the league. The percentages were also pretty cruel to Thoresen that year and explain why his counting stats were so poor (that and bottom 6 ice time of course).
For further context, consider the fact that Thoresen scored 108 points in 71 games during his final year in the QMJHL. He fled to the SEL after that and managed 17 goals and 36 points in 50 games as a 23 year old. Desjardins rates the SEL at about .59 in his league equivalencies, meaning Thoresen's expected output in the NHL as a 23 year old would have been about 35 points, based on his output in Sweden. That's no homerun, but it's decent just the same.
I don't know what Thoresen's commitments are like in Russia, but if he's willing to give the NHL another shot this off-season, he'd probably cost pennies on the dollar relative to the other guys in the free agent market.
