Will a player continue his current production level or will he fall off at some point? There’s a number that can help with this assessment and it is generally thought of as one of the most reliable analytic numbers current available.
A statistic that is commonly referred to by those indicating luck is PDO. PDO is the sum of on ice shooting percentage and save percentage. It has largely been proven that this number will generally regress to the average of 100 eventually. Think of someone around an 8% shooting percentage and 92% save percentage as being a normal player.
When applying this number to the NHL today we can create some insights into players who will be due to either increase or decrease their production. Knowing this can help you in your fantasy hockey pool as well as helping you understand what to expect from your favorite team moving forward.
I have chosen some of the players that I believe are going to see a positive or negative regression at some point this season below:
Rick Nash, New York Rangers
Rick Nash has seen a resurgence this season which I previously discussed in another article. He has seen a drop in shooting percentage since the writing of that article and I expect it will drop even further still.
Filip Forsberg, Nashville Predators
This super rookie already has 21 points on the season and has been essential to the Predators success. His PDO is sitting extremely high at 109.
Most assuredly Forsberg cannot keep up this pace for the entire season. The majority of the PDO being so high is caused by a 0.968 on ice save percentage so I do not expect a tremendous drop in production here.
Current Predators Head Coach Peter Laviolette is doing his best to give Forsberg favorable zone starts. To date he has only started 25% of his shifts in the defending zone.
Eric Staal, Carolina Hurricanes
Currently shooting a measly 4.4% with a PDO of only 95 leading to only 33% of the goals for while he is on the ice it has been a very difficult season to date.
Rumors of a trade hanging over his head cannot be helping his focus. He wants to be in Carolina for the long haul and the Hurricanes would do wise to keep him there. It is not easy finding true first line centers in the NHL. When you have one, you do not give it away.
With a career shooting percentage of nearly 11%, the eldest of the Staal brothers can be expected to bounce back at some point this season. However until he does the Hurricanes can be expected to continue to struggle.
Gabriel Landeskog & Nathan MacKinnon, Colorado Avalanche
After what was such a promising season for Colorado in Patrick Roy’s first as head coach, this season has largely been a flop. Both Landeskog and MacKinnon are counted on for offense, however with 6% and 6.4% shooting percentages respectively, they are not delivering.
While I do not expect a great deal of improvement from the Avalanche in terms of moving up into a playoff spot, these two young core players are going to be essential moving forward.
Perhaps this will be a valuable experience for both to go though a slump in order to become better players moving forward.
