5 Bounce-back Candidates for 2023-24

The 2022-23 season went off the rails for these five players. Can they bounce back in the 2023-24 season?

It happens to everyone. Things just don’t feel right in that given year, be it through injury, poor luck or just not being able to get used to their new surroundings.

The 2022-23 season certainly saw its fair share of players who failed to live up to expectations. But as Alfred once said to a demoralized Bruce Wayne, we fall because we have to learn how to get back up.

There’s plenty of players in line for a bounce-back season in 2023-24. We’re excluding players coming back from significant injuries, such as Zach Werenski or Sean Couturier, because their upside is obvious and their lack of production was due to poor luck and not poor play.

Here’s a list of five players who could be excellent value picks should they fall in your draft.

To say the Huberdeau’s season was a disaster would be the understatement. He was supposed to ignite a Flames offense that had lost Johnny Gaudreau for nothing, and instead saw a 60-point (!) dip and suffered his lowest point-per-game campaign in eight seasons. The drop-off is the biggest one-season decline in the cap era.

With a new voice behind the bench, no sky-high expectations and the initial shock of the blockbuster trade wearing off, perhaps this is the recipe for Huberdeau to get back on track. At times last season, Darryl Sutter stubbornly refused to play Huberdeau at his natural left-wing position, or play him at all. The result: less than 17 minutes per game, less than two shots per game and a huge dip in power-play numbers. When your play craters as much as it has, the only way to go is up.

It's worth noting that Huberdeau’s advanced stats don’t really indicate a decline in his ability; his shooting percentages, first assist totals and Individual Point Percentage, are all in line with his 115-point season with the Panthers. The big change? A lot fewer starts in the offensive zone, going from extreme usage with 78.33 Offensive Zone Start % with the Panthers to just 61.06 percent with the Flames. Better usage, a little more puck luck and more shots on goal should help Huberdeau turn it around. If Huberdeau can return to point-per-game production, he’s an excellent value pick in the middle rounds.

Lundell’s career was off to a roaring start, finishing sixth in Calder voting, garnering Selke votes and being hailed as a younger clone of Aleksander Barkov. In his sophomore season, his shooting percentage was cut in half (14.4 S% to 7.9 S%), failed to score a single power-play goal and saw his point per game average drop by 0.22 despite averaging more ice time.

The Panthers really need to rely on their deep crop of forwards to get them through the early parts of the season while their blue line await the return of both Brandon Montour and Aaron Ekblad. The most encouraging stat regarding Lundell’s play are his possession metrics, which remained incredibly strong at 5-on-5. A regression toward the mean for his shooting percentage should put him close to 20-goal territory and get him back on track, perhaps even leapfrogging Sam Bennett on the depth chart.

If Teravainen really doesn’t get it together, he’s going to be on the outside looking in. There are no guarantees the Canes will re-sign the impending UFA; his 2022-23 campaign was so bad it glossed over the fact that Teravainen amassed 283 points over a five-year period, starting with his breakout 64-point season in 2017-18, and trailed only Sebastian Aho in total points and points per game.

The addition of Michael Bunting, and the emergence of Seth Jarvis and Martin Necas has pushed Teravainen way down the depth chart. For a team that has shown a refusal to budge from its own player evaluation model, it doesn’t take a genius to see that 37 points is not enough to justify a $5.4-million cap hit. If Teravainen can push higher in the lineup and use his contract year as motivation, there’s no reason he can’t return to his usual 60-point output. It’s not a question of talent, that’s for sure.

Dadonov’s stat line is misleading, thought admittedly on the surface it looks horrible. He scored just seven goals after scoring 20 goals for the Knights in the previous season, his fourth 20-goal campaign in five seasons. The 2022-23 season was a Jekyll-and-Hyde story for Dadonov, who scored 18 points in 50 games for the Habs but managed to revive his floundering campaign with the Stars, scoring 15 points in 23 games. He showed excellent chemistry with Jamie Benn and Wyatt Johnston, and that line is expected to stay intact for 2023-24.

Dadonov’s getting up there in age – he’ll turn 35 next March – but he’s always been a pretty good finisher and in the right situation can get you at least 20 goals and close to 50 points.

That two Flames made this list just shows how disappointing they were last season. Over the past four seasons, Markstrom has curiously alternated between good and bad. In his final season with the Canucks, Markstrom finished fourth in Vezina voting and parlayed that into a massive six-year deal with the Flames, only to subsequently lose a league-high 19 games. He turned it around in his second year with the Flames, this time finishing second in Vezina voting, but again followed that up with an abysmal campaign.

If Markstrom’s recent pattern holds true, he’s going to bounce back incredibly strong for the 2023-24 season. The Pacific Division proved to be much stronger than everyone anticipated last season, even producing the eventual champions, but Markstrom’s one of the few workhorses in the league, capable of starting 60 games, with no threat of losing the starting job to Dan Vladar. (Dustin Wolf is a different story).

Honourable Mention: Alex DeBrincat, LW, Red Wings; Tanner Jeannot, RW, Lightning; Anthony Mantha, RW, Capitals; Lucas Raymond, LW, Red Wings; Bryan Rust, RW, Penguins

All positions courtesy of Yahoo! Fantasy. All advanced stats courtesy naturalstattrick.com.