Doerrie’s 3 NHL Players Ripe For Regression In 2021-22

On Wednesday’s edition of the Daily Faceoff Show, Frank Seravalli introduced the newest member of the DFO team — Rachel Doerrie, a former NHL front office analyst.

Doerrie will be joining the Daily Faceoff Show weekly for a segment called “Number Crunch,” in which she discusses analytics and provides context to what we see on the ice.

In her debut, Doerrie broke down three players who had big seasons in 2021 but are ripe for a regression this season. Here’s who she talked about…

Tyler Toffoli:

“That should be the headline. Toffoli doesn’t get to score one million times against the Canucks this year.

Tyler Toffoli had a fantastic season last year, there’s no denying that. But if we look at it, he’s probably not going to shoot 18 percent this year. I would expect that to be closer to 12 maybe even 11 percent. So, right there, we’re looking at a regression.

The other thing is that this is a really strong division. The Atlantic, you’re going to look at Tampa, you’re going to look at Florida, Toronto, Boston, you aren’t going to get to play Buffalo every single night, so I think it’s going to be tough from that perspective.

The other underrated thing is that the quality of centre in Montreal with the loss of Phillip Danault. It’s really only Nick Suzuki now and that’s a problem because if Toffoli isn’t playing with Suzuki, I’m not sure there’s a ton of players in Montreal who can get him the puck in scoring areas. He’s not a guy that can generate his own scoring chances.”

Jakob Chychrun:

“If you look at the moves that Arizona made this year, they’re not built to be good. Out the door goes Conor Garland, out the door goes Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who, to be fair, wasn’t good last year, but when he’s working with Jakob Chychrun, that’s still going to be a positive for Chychrun.

So, for me, his quality of teammate has gone down. He shot 10.2 percent last year with 18 goals, I think that probably ends up closer to 12 or 13. He’s still going to get power-play minutes, but when you look at what’s going on in Arizona, he’s not going to have many players to work with that are of that quality.

I think he regresses a little bit, but I do expect from a defensive standpoint that he’s going to take on a ton of minutes and harder matchups. I’m curious to see, from a defensive standpoint, if he takes a step back or if he’s able to take a step forward.”

David Perron:

“When we say ripe to regress, David Perron was over a point-per-game last year. He had 58 in 56. That was insanely high. He’s never been a point-per-game player in his career.

Kudos to him, that’s a fantastic season. He is a little bit injury prone. I think he’s played two full seasons in his entire career. I would say David Perron is probably happy with a 60-point season. People might say that isn’t really regression, but, if you look at it, he was on an 87-point pace last year.

I don’t think he gets anywhere near that this year. I think he’s closer to 55 or 60. That’s a 30 percent regression. That’s going to be something to watch for.

He’s playing with Ryan O’Reilly so he might be the product of some accidental assists there but I’m still looking for him to regress to where he was previously as father time catches up with him.”

You can watch the whole episode here… You can also listen to the episode on Spotify or Apple.