10 NHL players likely to decline in 2023-24
Luck plays a big role in the game of hockey, mostly because of the chaotic nature of the sport. I mean, it’s a game where people shoot rubber disks with sticks at a guy with pillows all over him, while they all wear shoes with knives so that they can walk on ice. Bounces are bound to happen, both good and bad, because it’s impossible for everything to go exactly as planned in this sport.
And that can happen in more than just isolated events as well. Sometimes a player or even a team can see their fortunes change for better or worse over the course of a full season and result in a year no one saw coming, whether that be them putting up career highs well above their usual performance or struggling in frustration as they just can’t seem to get the bounces to go their way.
Today, I’ll be looking at the players who saw the bounces go their way in 2022-23 – and how they’ll likely see some form of a decline next season. Some will be due to luck going the other way next season, and some might be because they’ve moved on to a different team whose environment won’t be quite as beneficial as their old one. Not every player is a mediocre talent who produced at an elite level, as some are consistently great players that put up even bigger numbers than normal in 2022-23 and just aren’t so good that they can sustain it for multiple seasons. They aren’t guaranteed to see a decline since luck can be a bit of a crapshoot to predict, but it feels like a safe bet that they won’t be nearly as good as they were last season.
All stats are from Evolving Hockey. Each player’s 2022-23 stats are listed along with their career averages in parentheses. Not every stat will be a massive outlier from their career average, but each one is enough that there’s evidence for a rebound.
Jamie Benn, Dallas Stars
82 GP – 33 G – 45 A – 78 P (29 G – 39 A – 68 P career 82 game pace)
0.29 goals scored above expected per 60 (0.08 career per 60 rate)
17.4% shooting percentage (13.2% career rate)
13.08% 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage (9.34% career rate)
There was once a time when Benn would put up a 30-goal season and produce at a point-per-game pace and you wouldn’t bat an eye. This is a player who once won the Art Ross in 2014-15, although that did come during the absolute low point of offense in the NHL in the 2010s, with Benn’s 87 points marking the only time in the salary cap era that the Art Ross winner scored under 100 points in an 82-game season. And yet it does come as a surprise now, as he had been producing at more of a 50-point clip for several seasons before 2022-23.
It helps that he found his groove playing alongside Wyatt Johnston, so maybe this is a sign that Benn is returning to form. But, he did see around a 4% increase in both his own shooting percentage as well as that of his teammates when he was on the ice, and his goals scored above expected per 60 was well above what he normally produces. On top of that, he benefitted heavily from being the fifth man on that top power play unit with Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz, Joe Pavelski, and Miro Heiskanen. Staying there in 2023-24 could help him remain productive, and improved Stars forward depth could allow him to maintain his even strength scoring, but it could also mean he gets pushed down the lineup more, especially if he falters off the start and coach Pete DeBoer decides to change things up. Plus at 34, it’s hard to see Benn returning to an elite scoring level, unless Pavelski has shared his secrets.
Adrian Kempe, Los Angeles Kings
82 GP – 41 G – 26 A – 67 P (23 G – 21 A – 44 P career 82 game pace)
0.57 goals scored above expected per 60 (0.17 career per 60 rate)
16.4% shooting percentage (12.6% career rate)
8.5% 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage (6.91% career rate)
Kempe seems to have come from out of nowhere as a top scoring threat on the Kings, going from a career total of 55 goals through his first five seasons in the NHL to scoring 35 and 41 in the past two seasons. It helps that he’s been elevated into a top-six role with a lot more power play work and spent most of his time glued to Anze Kopitar, but even then, Kempe’s goal scoring rates have climbed from 0.62 5v5 goals per 60 minutes through his first five seasons to 1.1 in the past two.
I’m not quite as sold on Kempe as a regression candidate as I am with other players on this list, as I would have pegged him as a candidate last season as well, and he not only maintained both his goal-scoring and his shooting percentage but increased them in 2022-23. It’s possible that the power play time and playing with Kopitar has helped him improve, and the fact that the Kings now have another center after trading for Pierre-Luc Dubois means that Kempe will be playing with a strong center on any of the top three lines between Kopitar, Dubois, and Phillip Danault. I still think the bill eventually comes due for Kempe’s good luck, but it’s also possible that this just is who he is now.
Alex Killorn, Anaheim Ducks
82 GP – 27 G – 37 A – 64 P (20 G – 27 A – 47 P career 82 game pace)
0.3 goals scored above expected per 60 (0.09 career per 60 rate)
18.9% shooting percentage (12.5% career rate)
11.81% 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage (9.3% career rate)
Alex Killorn picked the best time to have a couple of strong seasons, as back-to-back career years that saw him produce 59 and 64 points allowed him to make bank in free agency with the Anaheim Ducks. It was a contract that I thought would be bad before free agency, and ended up being bad, but I doubt that Killorn will complain.
The issue for the Ducks is that on top of the underlying numbers indicating that these seasons are outliers, these numbers were also created in one of the league’s most consistently productive and creative offenses in the Tampa Bay Lightning. Killorn got to play with the likes of Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, and Brayden Point, and as the team lost more and more pieces as their salary cap situation became tighter, Killorn’s ice time increased and he found himself in more beneficial situations. He’ll likely get that ice time in Anaheim, but the Ducks lack the level of talent that those big names in Tampa possess, so that’s likely going to come with a decline to the 40-point range, especially as he turns 34 at the start of training camp.
Joonas Korpisalo, Ottawa Senators
.915 save percentage (.904 career save percentage)
I swear, I’m not personally trying to destroy Korpisalo’s reputation. This is the third time the goalie has appeared on one of my lists this offseason, with the other two being when I predicted him getting a bad contract in free agency, and the other being the list of the worst contracts signed in free agency. There is a correlation though, and that’s because the reason I thought he was going to get a bad contract was due to a team buying high on a career year for the goaltender.
It was a solid season for Korpisalo, playing well behind a heavily injured and defensively poor Columbus Blue Jackets team before stabilizing a Los Angeles Kings team in desperate need of a goaltender that wasn’t one of the worst in the league. But otherwise, he’s hovered around replacement level for a majority of his career, and that is the kind of goaltender the Senators should expect throughout the duration of his five-year contract. The fact that Korpisalo’s 2021-22 season was the worst of his career should further prove that 2022-23 was also a blip, as it was a positive regression to balance out that bad season. At the very least, it means that the Sens will get that career .904 Korpisalo instead of the worst season of his career, which came while battling a hip injury that he had surgically repaired.
Andrei Kuzmenko, Vancouver Canucks
81 GP – 39 G – 35 A – 74 P
0.69 goals scored above expected per 60
27.3% shooting percentage
12.95% 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage
Kuzmenko is the most interesting case on this list, mostly because unlike every other player on this list, he has nothing to base this season off of as an outlier in the NHL. 2022-23 was his “rookie” season in the NHL, and he put up numbers that likely would have given him the Calder Trophy if he wasn’t too old to qualify for it. His KHL numbers show some indication that he can produce at this rate, but the NHL is a much tougher league, so it’s hard to fully believe that he can keep this up.
It becomes even trickier to believe that Kuzmenko can continue this pace when you look at his 27.3% shooting percentage, which led the league amongst players with more than 10 games played. The reason why I like to compare a player’s shooting percentage to their career percentage is because while it’s safe to assume that most will hover around the league average of 9-10% year after year, some players can consistently overperform that because they’re more efficient shooters. Auston Matthews has shot 15.7% in his career, Alex Ovechkin is at 12.9%, even someone like Patrik Laine shoots 14.7%, so the fact that we don’t know Kuzmenko’s true shooting level yet means that he could be a high-end goal scorer in the NHL. But no one can sustain a 27.3% in this era of hockey, even if they are glued to Elias Pettersson, so I don’t expect him to be this good unless he becomes more of a volume threat. It’s a big reason why it would have been smart to move on from Kuzmenko at the 2023 trade deadline and sell high on him. Instead, the Canucks signed him to a bridge deal, and now they likely won’t get another chance this good.
Jared McCann, Seattle Kraken
79 GP – 40 G – 30 A – 70 P (22 G – 23 A – 45 P career 82 game pace)
0.91 goals scored above expected per 60 (0.26 career per 60 rate)
19% shooting percentage (12.1% career rate)
12.75% 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage (9.13% career rate)
No player scored more goals above expected per 60 minutes with at least 500 minutes of ice time this season than Jared McCann. In fact, no player was even close, as McCann’s 0.91 mark on the year has a significant gap on Kuzmenko’s 0.69, and the distance between first and second on that list is the same as 2nd and 17th. This was far and away McCann’s best season in the NHL, and it played a big role in the Kraken’s extremely deep offensive unit last season.
However, McCann might not be as much of a slam dunk for a decline as other people on this list, or at least not to his previous stage of 30-40 points from his earlier years. McCann has become Seattle’s version of what William Karlsson did with the Vegas Golden Knights, coming out of nowhere to score 43 goals in their inaugural season. That said, McCann was a more known commodity in the NHL, and a lot of people figured he’d thrive in a bigger role when finally given the chance, while Karlsson was a surprise to a majority of the hockey world. Still, McCann’s underlying numbers indicate that he did overperform a little bit, so it’s likely that he doesn’t do exactly what he did in 2022-23, but he’ll probably be in the 30-goal and 50-point range like in his first season with Seattle in 2021-22.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Edmonton Oilers
82 GP – 37 G – 67 A – 104 P (23 G – 41 A – 64 P career 82 game pace)
0.27 goals scored above expected per 60 (0.03 career per 60 rate)
18.4% shooting percentage (12.2% career rate)
10.79% 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage (8.96% career rate)
I’ll be honest, I did not notice how good of a season Nugent-Hopkins was having in 2022-23 until he hit the 100-point mark and everyone was talking about that milestone. He’s not the kind of player I’d expect to put up those types of numbers, especially because his previous career high was only 69 points, so it’s not like he’s been consistently putting up these stats alongside Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl and this production is just due to that. Playing a full 82 game season for the third time in his career certainly helps, but it’s still a significant outlier.
A big reason for Nugent-Hopkins success was due to the Oilers’ record-breaking power play, where he had 15 of his 37 goals and 53 of his 104 points. That’s right, his point totals drop by more than half if you look at just his even-strength production, going from ninth in league scoring to tied for 55th with Dylan Cozens, Dylan Larkin, Chandler Stephenson, Vincent Trocheck, and Evgeni Malkin, which is a group that he makes much more sense to be in outside of Malkin. There’s no guarantee that he drops off unless he’s not on that top power play unit because McDavid and Draisaitl are just that good at producing offense, but it’d be a bit more reasonable to expect him to fall back to the 70-point range that he was in for most of his career when healthy.
Mark Scheifele, Winnipeg Jets
81 GP – 42 G – 26 A – 68 P (31 G – 42 A – 73 P career 82 game pace)
0.26 goals scored above expected per 60 (0.19 career per 60 rate)
20.4% shooting percentage (16.8% career rate)
12.75% 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage (9.57% career rate)
When talking about Kuzmenko, I mentioned how shooting percentage luck is more focused on a player’s career average versus league average because there are some players who are skilled enough to make their own luck and score more efficiently. Scheifele is another one of those players, hovering around 16.8%, and in terms of overall points he actually underperformed last season.
He makes the list because my focus with Scheifele is more on his goal totals, as he set a new career-high with 42, and it’s only the third time in his career he’s scored 30. As the forward enters his age-30 season, there’s a likely chance that this is just his peak and not the beginning of a new era in his career. He’ll still be an excellent offense creator, but it’s more likely that that comes from his assists coming back up to normal as opposed to maintaining a 40-goal pace going forward.
Linus Ullmark, Boston Bruins
.938 save percentage (.919 career save percentage)
Going into this list, I’d more or less already planned for Ullmark to be on it. It’s kind of the lay-up option, especially when save percentage is one of the two stats factored into the commonly used statistic for luck called PDO (along with shooting percentage), so when a lot of a goalie’s evaluation and success comes from that stat, and they have a career high by significant margins, that should raise some red flags. And the thing with Ullmark is that it’s not only an outlier for his own career, it’s an outlier in NHL history, as he’s tied with Tim Thomas’ 2010-11 season for the best save percentage in a season since the stat was recorded (with a minimum of 41 games).
That’s not to say Ullmark didn’t deserve all of the success that he had last season. His underlying numbers were still among the best in the league, so he wasn’t just the product of playing behind the Bruins, and he’s a career .919, which is still really good, especially in an era where goal-scoring is up. He’s just not as good as he was last season, so Bruins fans probably shouldn’t grab their pitchforks if he returns to normal next season, or worse, he regresses the other way. And let’s not forget, he’s going to be playing behind a weakened Bruins team as well, so that alone would make his season worse than last season.
Pavel Zacha, Boston Bruins
82 GP – 21 G – 36 A – 57 P (16 G – 26 A – 42 P career 82 game pace)
0.21 goals scored above expected per 60 (0.04 career per 60 rate)
16% shooting percentage (11.6% career rate)
12.13% 5v5 on-ice shooting percentage (8.16% career rate)
In a 2015 draft loaded with talent, especially in the first round, Zacha stuck out like a sore thumb and probably would have gotten more attention as a disappointing pick for sixth overall if not for the fact that Dylan Strome was equally disappointing at third overall. It only took one year for Zacha to get a consistent role with the New Jersey Devils, but he didn’t quite live up to expectations, only producing at around 30 points a year. But after he was dealt to the Bruins, he broke out with his first 20-goal season and nearly hit the 60-point mark after not even getting 40 in a season in his career.
A big part of that increase in production was when he started to play with David Pastrnak and David Krejci on the Czech Line and rode the coattails of Pastrnak, who also had a career year and was a finalist for the Hart Trophy. It’s possible that he sees that again playing with Pastrnak, or even sees a bigger role if the Bruins aren’t able to add any centers externally in the wake of Patrice Bergeron’s retirement, but like a lot of the Bruins in 2022-23, he had a lot of good fortune that led to his career year. The Bruins seem to think it’s more than that, as they banked on this being the new Zacha and gave him $4.75 million for the next four seasons, a move that could end up looking questionable if Zacha does regress, especially when that money could have gone towards keeping Taylor Hall, Dmitry Orlov, or Tyler Bertuzzi around instead.
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