It’s just the nature of sports that luck is built in to every season, every game, every player: A football is essentially the shape of a diamond, baseball players have to hit a round ball with a round bat.
Hockey is no exception to the luck rule. In fact, it has been found that it really does take a full 82 game season just for team talent to balance out “puck luck”. As much as I love a seven game series, that’s less than 10 percent the sample size necessary to really determine who the best team is.
Shooting percentage regression (and progression) is a very real thing, and it’s very much luck-related. In an article over the summer, I looked at how difficult it is to sustain a high shooting percentage, and how avoiding outliers can help you at the draft table. For reference, the two guys I named specifically were Jeff Carter and Jakub Voracek:
Through a combined 34 games this year, the two have combined for eight goals on 95 shots. They are shooting 8.4 percent and scoring one goal every 4.25 games.
In 96 games last year, the two combined for 48 goals on 262 shots. They shot 18.3 percent and scored and scored one goal every two games.
This year is a small sample so far so they can improve, but they won’t come close to where they were last year. They are also outliers who were over-drafted this year because of their success in a 48-game season. Granted, Carter has a longer/better track record than Voracek so he’s a better bet to rebound, and rebound more significantly.
With Carter being the first rebound candidate I’ll propose, here are some other guys I would target in expectation of their shooting percentage to rebound (from highest-to-lowest in value).
Evgeni Malkin (F-PIT)
With one-quarter of the season gone and Malkin having just three goals to his name, there are articles that come out professing his struggles. I won’t link them, but if you feel inclined, just google “what’s wrong with Malkin?” Just make sure you click on one from the last week or so, because apparently there’s been something wrong with Malkin going back to 2008.
It’s been written about how the Penguins’ plan as a team is to use Malkin and Sidney Crosby to make marginal players around them substantially better. Malkin is also taking a career-low 2.67 shots per game. That said, he’s still shooting just 5.4 percent, with a career mark of 12.6 percent and a career-low of 8.2 percent in an injury-shortened 2010-2011 season. When you figure he’s fourth in the NHL in assists and his goal scoring could pick up considerably the rest of the way, he’s still an elite option. Try offering an elite option that will regress like Alex Steen, just to see if the Malkin owner is frustrated enough. There’s no better time to buy low on a player than when the media is trashing him.
Eric Staal (F-CAR)
Cloud linings are silver before the darkest dawn or something cliché like that. Anyway, Alex Semin was diagnosed with a concussion, and there was a hole created on the top line in Carolina. It’s been mix-and-match most of the season any way for most of their forwards, but then this tweet came out from Hurricanes practice:
Skinner on line with EStaal, Tlusty
— Chip Alexander (@ice_chip) November 20, 2013
Ahh, the bright side of life.
Jeff Skinner is an elite young talent who has struggled early in his career with injury. After putting up nine points in ten games playing mostly on the third line, Skinner was sidelined with a hand injury. With Skinner returning shortly, and on the top power play and even strength lines, that means a quick boost for Eric Staal may be forthcoming.
Staal and Skinner are both high-volume shooters, which means lots of rebounds, deflections and tips. Historically, Staal scores at a slightly higher rate with Skinner than he does overall, so if you figure he starts scoring a bit more regardless and factor in his 7.6 percent shooting rate (a career-low since 2005), you have to figure Staal turns his season around. In some ways, it’s started already, as he’s on a three-game point streak. That buying window is closing.
Scott Hartnell (F-PHI)
This is a player you will want more in rotisserie/head-to-head leagues than points-only leagues.
In his previous nine seasons, Hartnell shot at least 10 percent in eight of them and 8.2 percent in the ninth one. This year, he’s at 6.7% and it’s getting better pretty much every other game; after scoring zero goals in his first nine games, Hartnell has three in his last seven.
Hartnell’s value is derived from the play of the other members of the top line in Philadelphia and he, Voracek and Claude Giroux got off to really slow starts this year. Those three players have now combined for 15 points in the Flyers’ last five games.
Scott Hartnell is a player, much in the mold like David Backes and P.K. Subban (although I am not comparing him to them), where he doesn’t have to score to contribute to your fantasy team. He can drop the gloves, he can fire six or seven shots on net in a game, and he can also score. He won’t get to 30 goals, but he could score 20 over the final 60 games of the season.
Duncan Keith (D-CHI)
This is very reminiscent of Drew Doughty last year.
Due to the nature of their position, defensemen are going to score on a lower percentage of their shots than forwards. When a high-volume shooting defenseman like Doughty goes into a slump, it can be very prolonged because the scoring chances, which are high-percentage situations, are more infrequent. So last year Doughty scored zero goals on his first 62 shots, but six on his next 52 shots.
So far this year, Keith has one goal in 22 games off of 64 shots. That gives him a whopping 1.6 percent shooting on the season. He hasn’t been a goal-scoring defenseman for the last few years, but he did score 12 in 2007-2008 and 14 in 2009-2010. Not only that, Keith is averaging 2.91 shots on net per game, a career-high. Even if he shot just 2.5 percent on the season, he would finish with five or six goals on the year. That means he should score four or five the rest of the way.
It might take a bit to pry him away because he does have so many assists, but penalty minutes and goals are killing his value. I would prod around if you need a Top 10 defenseman the rest of the season.
Always be on the lookout for guys with low shooting percentages; it does indicate a low level of production right now, but it also indicates a likely higher level of production in the future.
