Prospect Watch 2008: Peter "The Librarian" Olvecky

NHL.com sez:

Peter Olvecky -- In his third full season in Houston, the Wild's third-round selection from 2004 set a career high with 17 goals in 61 games. Regarded as a solid two-way player, Thompson believes Olvecky's late development is partly because the franchise didn't know where he was best suited.

"He's a guy that turned things around," Thompson said. "We didn't know what he was. We didn't know if he was a center or a winger or offensive or defensive. We never really knew. The second half of the year, he played a lot better. Hopefully he'll give some people a run for their money in camp."

Ms. Conduct sez:

Again, a frustratingly vague analysis from TT. He poses all these questions and never answers them. How'd he turn things around? Is he a center, winger, offense, defensive? I sure don't know based on watching Peter play last season (and apparently the prior TWO season, which I don't remember him at all).

And frankly, I can't fill in those blanks. The most I can say for sure about Peter is that he's a solid, even-keeled hockey player who will get you 30 points a year regardless of the system. The thing is, he apparently missed 29 games this season, but I had no idea. That's only 5 more games than Stoner played, but his absence I was keenly aware of.

In fact, if someone took the stats away from me and asked me how many games each guy played, I would have said Stoner played 50 and Olvecky played 70 (and wow, isn't he durable?). I'd be wrong all the way around on that guess, but it just demonstrates that whatever impact Peter has, it's a very, very quiet one. Shhhh!

Also, he had by far the worst plus/minus of the top 5 scorers for the Aeros. Ten below Reitz, who was +5 in 49 games.

I don't dislike Peter, but he's got "warm body" status in my mind. I haven't seen him make any big improvements (though his goals were up a bit this season) in his 3 years here, where some of the previous low key guys made fairly large strides. TT seems to think he has found his mojo, but I until I see evidence, it seems to me he's really just meeting the basic requirements: