The NHL's top goal-scorers in recent years have had a mix of success to start this season, whether it's Leon Draisaitl and William Nylander's surges or Auston Matthews' lagging.
Scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in the NHL. But as offense rises, it's not quite as hard as it used to be.
Hockey's top tier of talent has established impressive consistency when it comes to lighting the lamp.
Of the 35 NHL players who have scored 40 goals or more during the last three seasons, 14 of them have done it more than once during that time. Four players have hit the magic number in all three years: Auston Matthews, Leon Draisaitl, David Pastrnak and Kirill Kaprizov.
That last name might surprise you a bit, but it’s important.
Kaprizov’s hype meter is shooting up this season thanks to the unexpectedly hot start from the Minnesota Wild. The team is also hoping to give him a big raise from his current $9-million cap hit when he becomes eligible for a contract extension on July 1, 2025.
All four players on this list are still playing for the teams that drafted them, and the other three have already signed their big-money extensions. Pastrnak is in Year 2 at a comparatively value-priced $11.25-million cap hit. Matthews moved up to $13.25 million this year, and Draisaitl will get $14 million starting next season.
Kaprizov is currently on track for his best season yet at age 27. His previous highs were 47 goals and 108 points in 2021-22.
With seven goals and 21 points in his first 11 games, he’s tied for the NHL scoring lead and is currently tracking to break 50 goals and 150 points. If that happens, the Wild will have no choice but to open up the vault. He'll supplant Marian Gaborik as the most dynamic offensive threat in Wild franchise history.
Now with nine goals in 13 games, Draisaitl is on pace for his fourth 50-goal season. He has had a relatively slow start, but with that being said, his 28.1 percent shooting accuracy is likely unsustainable over 82 games.
Meanwhile, poor puck luck is probably the primary reason why both Matthews and David Pastrnak have produced below a 40-goal pace in the early going — highly uncharacteristic for both of them.
They’re tied for the league lead with 56 shots through 13 games. But Pastrnak’s 10.7-percent accuracy for six goals is three percentage points below his career average of 13.8 percent. And with five goals, Matthews is shooting just 8.9 percent after scoring on 18.7 percent of his shots for his 69-goal campaign last year. He has a solid 16-percent average across his full career.
It’s early enough that one big night would put Matthews or Pastrnak back on track for 40-plus goals this season — and they can do it. Pastrnak has 17 career hat tricks, second only to Alex Ovechkin among active players, and Matthews has 13. But neither player has logged a multi-goal game yet this year. Matthews is also missing Tuesday's game against the Boston Bruins and is day-to-day with an upper-body injury.
Four other players have also just put up back-to-back 40 goals seasons: Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen with the Colorado Avalanche, Brayden Point with the Tampa Bay Lightning and William Nylander of the Maple Leafs.
The Avs’ early-season troubles center more around defending than scoring, and their forward group will get some help when Artturi Lehkonen and Valeri Nichushkin each rejoin the team within the next couple of weeks.
Through the rough patch, MacKinnon has six goals in 12 games and is on pace to crack 40 again. Rantanen is slightly behind, with just four goals, but he should get more of a chance to focus on his offensive game once Colorado’s forward group re-balances.
It looks like the only thing that might slow down Point’s production would be the mysterious injury that caused him to leave the Lightning’s 7-4 loss to the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday — he played just six shifts but tallied his eighth goal of the year before his departure.
Point has an outstanding career shooting percentage of 18.6 percent. But he has been absolutely lights-out in the early going this year, hitting on 38.1 percent of his shots. Tampa Bay will miss him if he’s sidelined for any period of time.
As for Nylander, he’s on track to hit a new high this season. After back-to-back years of exactly 40 goals, he’s shooting nine points above his career average, at 21.4 percent, for nine goals in his first 13 games. If he keeps it up, he’ll get 56.
Among the first-time 40-goal scorers from the 2023-24 season, Sam Reinhart is out to prove that last year’s 57-goal campaign was not just the result of puck luck or raising his game in a contract year.
Reinhart led the NHL with an impressive 24.5-percent success rate on his shots last season. Despite expectations that he'd regress, he has actually improved to 26.3 percent — a perfect example of a modern player who doesn't shoot without believing that he could score.
Reinhart currently has 10 goals on 38 shots and has scored on two continents this season.
He potted three in the Florida Panthers' two wins over the Dallas Stars during the Global Series games in Finland last weekend.
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