A player’s raw talent or ability may not change much year over year, but the actual production can fluctuate tremendously from one season to the next. It’s a testament to how many factors influence scoring — there’s ice time and overall opportunity, puck luck, linemate quality, team quality, systems and so much more.
Many of these contextual factors can give us clues as to which NHL players could be primed to take a step back.
That’s what we’re in search of today — 10 players at risk of regressing in 2022-23. This could be a star who’s showing hints of decline, a breakout performance that will likely fall back down to Earth, or a player who simply performed at a level exceeding their true talent.
It’s really important to stress that a player isn’t “bad” or likely to see a decline in their actual abilities if they land on this list. Regression in the context of hockey is simply the theory that a player’s results will normalize closer to their talent level and the quality of their environment over time. If someone’s on this list it doesn’t mean I dislike them — in fact, I really like most of the players on this list — it’s just that they’re unlikely to replicate what they managed in the 2021-22 campaign.
My method for identifying regression candidates is essentially the inverse of what I looked for when analyzing possible breakout players.
The two most important factors I consider for this exercise are individual or on-ice shooting percentages, which are substantially higher than career averages as well as the diminishing quality of linemates or team.
Here are 10 players at risk of producing less than they did last season.
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