In least predictable Rocket Richard Trophy race in years, who ends up the winner?
It’s mid-November and the NHL’s goal-scoring leaderboard looks more interesting than it has in years. No one other than Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid has finished as the league leader since 2019-20, but with both players missing time due to injury early on this season, it feels likely we’ll see someone else win the Rocket Richard this year. Or will we?
Looking at the leaderboard, we’ve got one player with 13 goals, five players with 12 goals, three more with 11 and five with 10, including nine-time Rocket Richard winner Alex Ovechkin.
So, Roundtable members: Who will win the 2024-25 Rocket Richard Trophy?
MATT LARKIN: I had a good feeling about Leon Draisaitl this season coming off what I felt was a “down” stat line by his standards at 41-65-106. The three-time 50 goal scorer was due for a major course correction. Over the past five years, only Matthews has more goals than Draisaitl, who has never led the league. He’s got 12 already, and while he won’t sustain a shooting percentage of 27.3, he will sustain a very high one. He’s the third most accurate shooter in the NHL this millennium at 18.4 percent. If he can just get his shot volume back up, I like him for 55-plus snipes this year.
STEVEN ELLIS: I’m going with Nikita Kucherov – someone who has never been close to winning the Rocket. The way he’s playing, the way he’s shooting, everything – he rarely goes more than a few games without a goal and is getting some insane ice-time numbers at this rate. History has shown it’s hard to trust Kucherov in the goal-scoring race (he’s usually challenging for the Art Ross) but he’s producing and shooting at a rate we just haven’t seen before. I’m feeling good about him.
PAUL PIDUTTI: Despite the early gap on the leaders and lingering injury, I was really close to sticking with Auston Matthews. He had an unfathomable stretch of 38 goals in 34 games last year. Like Connor McDavid and the Art Ross Trophy, it takes a 20-game absence before either is out of the race. But given the fact he’s still not skating and it’s an upper-body injury, I’m going to wimp out. My horse in the race is Mikko Rantanen. He’s fifth in goals over the last five seasons behind only Matthews, Draisaitl, McDavid, and Pastrnak. He’s always been a high-conversion sniper (16.3% for his career). Most importantly, he’s playing 23 minutes per night on a depleted and desperate Colorado Avalanche team featuring a deadly power play and two all-time talents at the peak of their powers in Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar.
SCOTT MAXWELL: Unlike Paul, I will not wimp out. Until proven wrong, I think it will be Auston Matthews. Much like how Connor McDavid leading the league in scoring feels like an inevitability, the same goes for Matthews with scoring goals. He’s way behind now, and it feels insurmountable, but it’s not something he hasn’t done before. At the start of December in the 2019-20 season, David Pastrnak had a nine-goal lead on Matthews with a game in hand. Pastrnak finished that season with just one more goal, but had the season not been shortened due to COVID, Matthews probably would’ve overtaken him and won the Rocket Richard by season’s end. Or there was 2021-22, where by the start November, Matthews had just one goal while Alex Ovechkin had nine. For those of you that don’t remember that year, Matthews went on to score 51 goals in 50 games at one point and won the Rocket Richard with 60 goals – five more than the closest opponent.
Along with all that, Matthews has actually been shooting really well under the hood this season, generating expected goals at the highest rate of his career so far this year, and he would probably have more goals if he didn’t have a shooting percentage nearly half his career rate and the Toronto Maple Leafs’ power play wasn’t horrendous when he was healthy. My final point is that, in the top 25 for goal scorers right now, only ONE of them is shooting lower than 15%, so it’s quite likely a lot of the players Matthews needs to catch up to will slow down at some point at the same time Matthews goes on a heater and catches up. Of course, Matthews has also had seasons where he lagged behind and never caught up, most notably in 2022-23 when he only scored 40. But until we get closer to that point, I still have faith in the best goal scorer in the league.
ANTHONY DI MARCO: Sam Reinhart is my choice. He busted onto the scene last season and has picked up right where he left off. The Florida Panthers are once again the beast of the East and Reinhart is the focal point of the team’s offense. It’s hard not to give Reinhart his flowers as one of the league premier snipers after the recent run he has been on.
FRANK SERAVALLI: All of these are good choices, but I’m surprised that no one picked Kirill Kaprizov. He’s been electric this season and has proven that he can score consistently. He netted 47 goals in his first full season in the league, followed that up with 40 and 46 goals. Demonstrated ability? Check. More support from the Wild forwards this season? Check. And potential for more? Definitely. After a couple more ‘quiet’ seasons by his standard over the last two years, I think he’s still only really scratching the surface in the NHL and I think he has the most upside of anyone on this list outside of Rantanen to pop off and take home the Rocket.
_____
Article presented by Amazon Prime
This Article is a Presentation of Prime Video. Catch Prime Monday Night Hockey, all season long. Claim your free trial today.
_____
Recently by Daily Faceoff
- Which NHL team needs to shake things up with a trade ASAP?
- Which players have emerged as sleepers to make 4 Nations Face-Off teams?
- Who will be the first NHL coach fired this season?
- The next Malkin: Who will go down as this generation’s most underrated player?
- Gut feelings for 2024-25: Lottery Penguins, playoff Sabres and more