Every time someone suggests that Rocco Grimaldi is a lock for the team next season, I remind them, “Don’t count out Kyle Rau.” I’ve sent people multiple mock lineups for next season that include Rau on the second line. It started as a joke but it’s gotten more serious for me as time went on: don’t count out Kyle Rau.
The Match Up
Rocco Grimaldi (33rd overall) and Kyle Rau (99th overall) were both drafted in 2011. They are both natural centers (though Rau is a left shot and Grimaldi right), both undersized, and both have reputations for playing a fast, gritty game. They both took traditional American development paths, the US National Development Program followed by the University of North Dakota for Grimaldi and high school hockey in Minnesota followed by the University of Minnesota for Rau. Since pretty much the day they were drafted, I’ve said that my dream third line of the future is the two of them flanking fellow 2011 draft pick, Vincent Trocheck. However, since they were drafted, the general perception of their respective abilities has included fairly substantial gaps, lining up almost exactly with their draft order. Grimaldi, who has yet to truly establish himself professionally, is seen as the best, with Trocheck, who looks like a solid middle six NHL center, in second, and Rau, freshly turned pro out of college, far behind the others.
Scouting Report
Rocco Grimaldi
Corey Pronman, who focuses on prospects for ESPN Insider, opened his 2011 pre-draft ranking description of Grimaldi with this:
The most common phrase I hear in reference to Rocco Grimaldi when I talk to scouts usually goes along the lines of, “If only he was 5’11”, then he’d go first overall.”
Grimaldi was a magical prospect. He led the USNDP in points in both his U17 and U18 years, he had two U18 gold medals and one U17 gold medal, and had the kind of work ethic that makes any hockey brain trust salivate — it has never been unusual for Grimaldi to spend hours in the gym, even on days when he has a regular practice. He was a steal in the second round, with mid-first round rankings from multiple outlets, including Bob McKenzie, who usually has the best list around.
The last few years, however, Pronman’s ranking of Grimaldi in his top 100 prospects feature can be summarized as, “I used to have him ranked really highly and he’s underperforming but I can’t bear to take him off these lists because he used to be just so good.” As of the most recent list, he had finally fallen out of the top 100 and into the Honorable Mention category.
Grimaldi did well for himself in his first professional season, finishing respectably on the Rampage in both point totals and points per game. He was sixth in total points and fourth in points per game, behind only Drew Shore, Vince Trocheck, and Bobby Butler. However, he didn’t blow us away like he was supposed to, particularly in his brief NHL stint this year.
Maybe it was the knee injury in the fall of 2011 that turned him from greased lightning into simply fast. Maybe his size really does hinder him — Martin St. Louis is the exception, not the rule. Maybe it’s just that all the skill and gym time in the world doesn’t always translate into results. Maybe it’s not any one thing, it’s just a whole lot of things, all in combination.
At the 2013 World Junior Championship, Grimaldi was supposed to be the kind of weapon that helped Team USA stand up to a Team Canada headlined by Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jonathan Huberdeau, not to mention Nathan MacKinnon, Jonathan Drouin, Mark Scheifele, and others. Instead, he was simply okay. He started the tournament as a top six forward alongside JT Miller and Johnny Gaudreau, who tied for the team lead in points, but ended it on the third line with Trocheck. Going into the gold medal game, he had only two assists. In the gold medal game, he scored twice on greasy deflections, but for a guy as highly touted as Grimaldi, more was expected.
Kyle Rau
Showing up when it counts is the trademark of none other than Kyle Rau. Rau isn’t much bigger than Rocco Grimaldi (a roster height of 5’8″ to Grimaldi’s 5’6″) and he has always been less highly rated by the talking heads for a variety of reasons, none of which I think hold true anymore (e.g. he is so clutch I once spent three months referring to him exclusively as ‘GWG’ and anyone who followed college hockey knew who I meant). Just over a third of his goals in college were game-winners, which might be random, but it might just be Kyle Rau.
His most notable moment pre-draft was knocking home a rebound of his twin brother’s shot in the third overtime of the championship game of the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament. The University of Minnesota won the first ever B1G conference title when he scored in overtime. In his four years at Minnesota, he scored 67 goals — 23 of them game winners, allowing him to end his college career as the NCAA’s active leader in game winning goals.
Rau played with Nick Bjugstad for two years at the University of Minnesota. In 80 games together, Rau outscored Bjugstad — even though these were Bjustad’s sophomore and junior years and Rau’s freshman and sophomore years. While Rau was obviously helped by playing on Bjugstad’s wing, his performance remained stable after losing Bjugstad to the pros. He didn’t miss a step.
The Matchup
Here’s how Rau and Grimaldi’s college careers look side-by-side, from my personal stat files. You’ll notice two sets of goals-assists-points columns — the first is overall, the second (in red) uses only in-conference games. In-conference numbers are particularly useful when comparing Rau and Grimaldi through the 2012-13 season because their schools were both in the same conference for those years, meaning their in-conference games were against the same caliber opponents instead of a series of games where they were potentially beating up on weaker teams. For context, I’ve also provided their NCAA/conference point rankings.
Now, Grimaldi really only played two seasons to Rau’s four, due to his knee injury in November of 2011, but here’s something to notice: in every season, Rau had 40 points or more. Grimaldi never hit that mark, though he did come close enough for government work in 2013-14. Rau’s conference goal totals were lower the season they both played in the same conference, but not by all that much. (In 2013-14, though Grimaldi had the higher point total in conference games, both players finished ninth overall in conference scoring.) There simply isn’t a large enough gap in their production to explain the huge difference in perception between them as prospects — especially given that Rau’s defensive play is much more frequently lauded than Grimaldi’s.
What I keep coming back to is this: Grimaldi over Rau is a matter of reputation. Over and over again, commentary about Grimaldi points to how good he was when he was drafted. It looks at how he fell out of the first round only because of his size — and in an age where size is undervalued by twitter and amateur prospect evaluation, that’s dismissed as a concern. It looks at the excitement everyone feels when they see his speed and not at the ways in which he’s, frankly, flat-lined in his professional career.
We don’t know who Kyle Rau is going to be at the professional level. He looked good in his small sample of games with San Antonio, scoring in his first professional game. In his first seven games, he had as many points as Grimaldi had in his: three. And time and time again, when I look at just the players and not their names, Rau is the one I’m more excited to see.
Angie can be reached for contact on Twitter.
