Isaac Howard's first professional season gets packaged as a success story, and, to a point, it kinda is.
Howard averaged better than a point per game with the Bakersfield Condors, tallied 50 points in 47 games, and earned a spot on the AHL's All-Rookie Team. Hard to argue with any of that. But the shape of his season told a story that his hockey DB page doesn't quite capture. He yo-yoed. Up when injuries created space, back down when bodies returned. He played 29 games with the Edmonton Oilers all season and finished with five points. His last NHL game before a late recall came all the way back in January.
That's more a 21-year-old stuck in the in-between, never really planted anywhere and less a developmental plan.
Matt Savoie went to Bakersfield and stayed. He played first-line minutes, anchored the power play, became a penalty killer and the kind of player Kris Knoblauch could drop into the middle of the third line on a given night without flinching.
Savoie didn't wait for the NHL to come to him; he built the case so thoroughly that the decision made itself. When he arrived, it stuck.
Howard's path has been choppier. He made the Oilers' opening-night roster. That's a real vote of confidence. He played 17 games before his first assignment to Bakersfield, putting up two goals and an assist in that time.
The issue was never his ceiling. It was that his game, promising in stretches, hadn't yet grown into something coaches could rely on in tight situations. When he went back down, he reminded everyone why they were excited about him in the first place. He had two goals and five assists in his first four games back with the Condors and ranked second in the entire AHL in points per game.
Good enough to get recalled. Not quite good enough to hold the spot.
There's a cost to all this player movement. A full season in the AHL is a narrative people understand. You paid your dues, you dominated, you earned the call. What's trickier to shake is the experience of earning a recall and then watching the ice time quietly evaporate as the team gets healthy around you.
In one of his late-season stints in Edmonton, Howard played under ten minutes and didn't see the ice in the final 14 minutes of regulation, nor in overtime.
Still. The production rate at the AHL level was excellent. Howard finished third among all rookies in goals and sixth in scoring despite playing over 20 fewer games than most of the players above him in the standings.
He's not Savoie in terms of positional versatility; he's not going to be a penalty killer, and that's fine. Howard is a finisher, and that skill set has a home in Edmonton if he can frame it inside a more complete game.
The internal expectation is that Jack Roslovic won't be back, and that Howard is the name pencilled in to take that top-nine spot next season. It's an opportunity he's earned, even if the road getting here was bumpier than anyone would have drawn it up.
A meaningful chunk of Stan Bowman's legacy, if fans choose to take any positives from his tenure, is going to come down to what Howard and Savoie ultimately become.
Bowman cited those two, as well as Quinn Hudson and Vasily Podkolzin, as the bright spots in the Oilers' future, the players who can make a difference. Granted, they're the only players available to the Oilers, but still, Howard is included in that list.
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