There were plenty of overachievers in the 2022-23 NHL season. Can they repeat it?

“He did what?!”

At the end of every season, there’s always a few players who rank among the league’s top scorers that make us cry out in disbelief. Fantasy hockey is a fickle game, but the advent of advanced analytics and a better understanding of how stats can be used as a predictor of future performance – as imperfect as it may be – has certainly made it easier to identify fact from fiction.

Shooting percentages are a basic measure and they’ve been around forever, but they can be very telling. While it does not account for shot quality – either by shot type or location, as expected goals models often do – there’s such massive amounts of data that we can at least establish a baseline. Teams and players who have a shooting percentage well above the average will likely regress toward the mean, and vice versa for those who are well below average.

Based on the 2022-23 season with 8,248 goals for and 81,969 shots, the average shooting percentage is 10.06 percent. The league’s best finishers typically finish higher than 12 to 13 percent, and those who fall below 10 percent tend to be a) defensemen or b) bottom-line forwards with limited offense, or ones who experienced poor shooting luck.

Sometimes, a spike in production may signal the start of something new. Nathan MacKinnon, for example, was underwhelming for three seasons following his Calder Trophy win, but then exploded for 39 goals and 97 points following a massive spike in shooting percentage and improved possession metrics that he has managed to sustain. That was not altogether unexpected for the former first overall pick, but the correlation is obvious.

But other times, that spike in shooting percentage is what we expect – a one-season anomaly and a performance so extraordinary we don’t expect an encore. Here are your top regression candidates for the 2023-24 season and avoid drafting too early.

Jamie Benn, LW, Stars

Benn’s 33-goal output was his best in five seasons and the fifth-highest total in his 14-year career. The arrival of Wyatt Johnston sparked Benn, and his shooting percentage practically doubled to 17.4 percent from 9.9 percent from the previous season. Perhaps less is more for the aging 34-year-old power forward; his 15:47 TOI per game was the lowest since his rookie season, and we also shouldn’t discount the freer offense the Stars enjoyed under Peter DeBoer.

Benn has dialled back some of his shooting volume, either finishing or on pace to finish below 200 shots for five straight seasons. Even assuming 200 shots at his career 13.2 S%, that equates to 26 goals.

Andrei Kuzmenko, RW, Canucks

There are two things working in the 27-year-old’s favour: his wealth of experience in the KHL and elite skill, and also playing alongside Elias Pettersson, who was credited with a point in 60 percent (45 of 74) of Kuzmenko’s scoring plays.

But a 39-goal season off a 27.3 S% is simply absurd. There have been only 22 instances in the cap era in which a player has scored at least 30 goals with a shooting percentage of at least 20 percent. Kuzmenko tops the list, and rounding out the top five:

William Karlsson’s 43-goal season (23.4 S%) in 2017-18, who has since scored no more than 24 in any season; T.J. Oshie’s 33-goal season (23.1 S%) in 2016-17, who scored just 18 goals the following season; Petr Prucha’s 30-goal (23.1 S%) rookie season in 2005-06, only to wash out of the league in five years; and Anson Carter’s lone season with the Canucks, when Henrik and Daniel Sedin somehow bounced 33 goals (22.6 S%) off his stick, with Carter scoring just 11 goals in 64 games the following season, which ended up being his last in the NHL.

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Jared McCann, LW, Kraken

McCann will surely top everyone’s list of candidates whose play will regress. Averaging just 16:20 per game, McCann rode a sky-high 19.0 S% to his first 40-goal season. Among players who scored at least 40 goals last season, McCann registered the second-fewest shots on goal (210), the fourth-best shooting percentage and perhaps the most damning stat of all – a league-best 23.91 surplus in actual goals for against expected goals for among forwards with at least 500 TOI at 5-on-5.

McCann sticks out like a sore thumb among the 19 players who scored at least 40 goals, all of whom are first-line players. McCann ranked seventh on his own team in average ice time per game, and it would take another monumental effort sprinkled with luck to replicate what he accomplished last season.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, LW, Oilers

The difficult part in separating fact from fiction for Nugent-Hopkins is because of who he gets to play with. Basically, half of his points (53 of 104, or 50.97%) came via the power play, nearly double his previous career high of 26 power-play points. His 18.4 S% was also a career high, and these spikes are expected when you play with two of the league’s best players with the man advantage.

RNH is the safest option among players on this list, but his outsized production will be based primarily on the power play. His numbers will surely crater if he’s not used in the same role. It’s worth noting the Oilers finished with a 32.4 percent efficiency in 2022-23; it was the best power play the league has ever seen in the cap era, and with the potential to get even better. While we should be cautious of RNH’s rate of production, when you share the ice with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, anything is possible.

Pavel Zacha, RW, Bruins

Zacha will be a very interesting case study in 2023-24. On one hand, his point production should stay the same, or even improve, as he’s pencilled in to be the Bruins’ top center. On the other hand, generating offense is not his greatest strength, and his career-high 21-goal season came in the heels of a 16.0 S%.

Low shot totals and some good luck – Zacha’s PDO was 103.6 in 2022-23 – can certainly juice a shooting percentage. Zacha’s 10.7 S% as a Devil doesn’t necessarily reflect his ability, either, because he’s used in a different capacity as a Bruin. But just based on the eye test, Zacha doesn’t show any exceptional finishing talent, making his shooting percentage all the more suspicious.

Linus Ullmark, G, Bruins

Ullmark had a historically good season, going a ridiculous 40-6-1 and a league-best .938 SP and 1.89 GAA. It’s simply just common sense for Ullmark to regress. Any season like that will be hard to replicate, or even top, and he’ll be sharing the net with Jeremy Swayman once again. The Bruins will be without their defensive conscience, Patrice Bergeron, who won his sixth Selke last season, and No. 2 center David Krejci, who’s widely expected to announce his retirement soon. It’s leaving a gaping hole in arguably the most important position in hockey.

Ullmark is unlikely to be one of the first five goalies off the board despite his incredible season, which is reasonable and warranted. Among the players likely to regress on this list, Ullmark is the best (worst?) candidate.

Adin Hill, G, Golden Knights

Hill was a great story during the Knights’ Cup run, but any fantasy manager drafting Hill thinking he’s going to run away with the No. 1 job in Vegas will be in for a big surprise. Hill has never started more than 25 games in any season, a career high he just set this past season, and he ranks 33rd out of 78 goalies in goals saved above average per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 over the past two seasons. It’s not bad, but certainly not Conn Smythe-caliber good.

In short, expecting Hill to be the one with a .932 SP we saw in the playoffs would be a fool’s errand, not to mention that prior to his injury, Logan Thompson was the No. 1. Even assuming Robin Lehner does not return for 2023-24, the most likely scenario for the Knights is to operate a timeshare and count on Bruce Cassidy’s system once again to play a stifling system with their big, bruising defense.

Related:

5 Bounce-back Candidates for 2023-24

8 Breakout Candidates for 2023-24

7 Forwards Whose Fantasy Value Increased Significantly

5 Goalies and Defensemen Whose Fantasy Value Increased Significantly 

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