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2016-17 Point Projections For Pittsburgh's Core Players

July 22, 2016, 2:31 PM ET [46 Comments]
Ryan Wilson
Pittsburgh Penguins Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Last year was a tale of two seasons for the Pittsburgh Penguins. There was a twofold change that happened around mid-December. The Penguins fired their head coach Mike Johnston and promoted Mike Sullivan. There is no debating that the results were way better after the change. Mike Johnston deserves his share of criticism for the job he did in 2015-16, but there was another dynamic involved. It wasn't until around the coaching change that Rutherford made two of his more important in season player moves. Jim Rutherford traded for both Trevor Daley and Carl Hagelin. Both players were a better fit for the team and the direction the team wanted to move in. The change in philosophy combined with the proper personnel put in place equaled a championship.

Given that mostly all of the main players from the Stanley Cup championship are returning with the same coach in place I wanted to try and guess the offensive outputs for next year. Mostly every player saw a jump in their production under Mike Sullivan and away from Mike Johnston. The following is each players all situations points per 60 under both coaches last year.



As you can see almost all the major players saw a substantial improvement under Sullivan. Given that basically the same roster and coach are returning it is logical to surmise that their 2016-17 production should continue to stay close to where it was the second half of the season. To come up with my 2016-17 point projections I am going to take their all situations ice time from 2015-16 (Johnston + Sullivan) and apply their Sullivan all situations points per 60 to the entire sample. I have included Carl Hagelin and Trevor Daley in this section. I used their Sullivan all situations points/60 and their time on ice totals for the entire 2016-17 season like the other players even though their TOI came from other teams. I also included Matt Cullen to highlight his impact on the team last year and what the Penguins would be missing out on if he decides to go in a different direction.



So this is just a baseline. For most players the numbers look very reasonable. There are a few players I would like to elaborate on though. This is a case where you can take the baseline and then use context to make sense of the numbers.

Evgeni Malkin's ice time total is negatively impacting his projected point total and that is because of the time he missed from injury last year. If we were to give him the same minutes as Crosby (assuming a healthy year) his point total estimation would jump all the way to 94 points. That is very elite and should come as no surprise because he is great.

Nick Bonino saw minimal time under Johnston and his usage changed drastically under Sullivan when he was tasked to center the HBK line. If you gave him Hagelin's minute total his points would jump to 51 which seems reasonable for an entire year of HBK.

Olli Maatta was never healthy. Over the course of his career he has shown the ability to produce offense and I feel as though that projection is woefully low. If healthy he will probably see his all situations points per 60 closer to the 1.26 he had under Johnston. That would place him in that 30 point range which he was at in his rookie year playing 78 games. That was his only season with a clean bill of health.

Brian Dumoulin looks low and I would take the over on him but offensive production probably won't be his specialty in the NHL. He has room to grow but driving possession is what makes him so valuable. He was very unlucky last year on the goal scoring front and that will probably regress favorably in 2016-17. I look for him to be a Paul Martin type that will get about 20 points per year.

Time will tell how accurate these projections will be but with Pittsburgh entering the 2016-17, but with little turnover and the same coach I feel safe with the process used to come up with numbers.

Thanks for reading!
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