Hate to break it to people, but he’s gonna regress hard. He’s shooting about double what he did last season.
It is very rare to see anyone put up a season above 20% shooting, even the best shooter of all time.
Most likely he ends up with like 40-45 goals this season.
I get what you’re saying, history would say his shooting percentage would decline. He’s currently at 21.7 and his career is at 13.0 percent. A few thoughts about that.
- Scoring is up relative to the rest of his career. You’d expect his shooting percentage to be higher than average.
- He had stick issues last year with his company discontinuing his stick. He seems to have figured that out.
- His game has changed. I don’t have stats to back it up, but I’d expect them to show that his average distance from net for each shot has decreased relative to his prime. Closer to net should equate to higher shooting percentage.
- Ovi Strome Protas is arguably the best line in hockey right now.
- Caps PP production has been unsustainably low. You’d expect that to rebound and counteract some of the S% regression.
All that to say I agree regression is likely - 63+48 pace is absurd at his age and the accompanying PT bid would probably have him in Hart discussions. But I wouldn’t be so quick to say he’ll “regress hard.” Based on eye test of him, the line, and the team I’d honestly be a bit surprised if he doesn’t end up within a handful of goals either direction of 50.