As I said on Friday, today I will look at some individual performance and expectations that could allay some fears of the Senators, primarily their standout rookies, will fall victim to the dreaded "sophomore jinx".
Most of the nay-sayers who don't buy into the Senators being a legitimate playoff threat point to two things - Andrew Hammond and the production from Hoffman and Stone. I showed on Friday that although Hammond was great down the stretch, it was an overall increased level of team play that played as much a part in their run as Hammond did.
I wanted to see if such a thing exists or if it is an urban legend of sorts, and if there is a legitimate need to be worried about it hitting the Senators.
I looked at all rookies since 2000-01, who had over 20 goals and 40 points, barriers that were both surpassed by Hoffman and Stone this past season. I also broke it into under 21 year old players and players that were 21 and over in their rookie seasons.
I went into it thinking that if a sophomore slump exists, it would come more often from those players who came into the league earlier (the under 21's) rather than the ones who came in later. I used points per game as the determining factor of performance increase or decline from one year to the next.
For the purposes of this exercise, I will use a 20% decline as my benchmark to consider the season a legitimate letdown or "slump". (all numbers are from hockey-reference.com and use the age based on their listed age for the season) Essentially that means a 50 point player as a rookie is considered a slumping sophomore if they don't get to 40 points the next year (pro-rated).
The Under-21s
The guys who come into the league before they are 21 and star in their rookie season are essentially the "who's who of the NHL.
The 21 & Overs
As you would expect, the over-21s are a more diverse group who have gone on to very different levels of success, but still pretty solid careers. And the average increase from both groups was pretty similar, within a percentage point.
Recap
And if you look at the numbers for the players increasing their production, tailing off but not necessarily "slumping" and those slumping, the totals are pretty comparable between the two sets and this also shows that there is a better than 50% chance that their production is going to increase, but just around a 16% chance that they will fall victim to the sophomore jinx.
I understand this isn't the most scientific of all studies, and there are certainly other factors to the game than scoring, but I think it shows that the sophomore slump isn't really something to be overly concerned about. When players reach a certain level, it is because they deserve to be there and rarely does someone fall back dramatically in terms of production.
This did focus more on the two Senators' rookies who were big producers, Hoffman and Stone, and others around the league who have reached certain thresholds. It doesn't take into account the likes of Curtis Lazar, who you could say had a freshman slump when it came to scoring stats. It is tough to predict exactly what he will do, or even if he will play the whole season in Ottawa, but his 15 points is a relatively low percentage of the team's overall offense. Any increase in his production, although probably expected by most, will be a bonus.
It also doesn't take into account goalies, and who can really predict with any accuracy what Andrew Hammond will be this season and going forward? I certainly have no clue, it could be a tire fire or he could be calm, cool and collected and become the most unexpected #1 goalie in years. There isn't a category for what undrafted minor leaguers who win 20 of their first 23 starts do for an encore. We will have to wait and see on that one.