New York Rangers: Five players who could regress this season

With training camp’s opening comes renewed expectations. Which New York Rangers players will fail to live up to them?

While a new year typically brings high hopes, not every Ranger will be to exceed, and in some cases play ay the same level, as they did last season Though anyone can have an off year, some players face more glaring warning signs than others.

Nobody likes to admit it, but sometimes luck carries more weight than skill. Luck doesn’t last forever, though.

A few Rangers face especially daunting odds when their good fortune runs out. Though no one can see the future and hockey analytics are far from perfect, we can use the numbers to make educated guesses. Here are the top five candidates to regress downward this season.

Kevin Hayes

Kevin Hayes spent much of the 2016-17 season on a line with Miller. Most of the positives and negatives attributed to Miller over the last two years also fit Hayes. The potential pitfalls facing them this year differ slightly, though.

Like Miller, Hayes yields a very high rate of opposing shot attempts. Additionally, New York generated shot attempts with Hayes on the ice at the lowest frequency of any Ranger forward.

Unlike Miller, Hayes does not boast an unsustainable shooting percentage. His point total growth to 49 from 36 the prior year paints a rosy picture. TV commentators mentioned Hayes losing 20 pounds between the two seasons so frequently that it became a running joke among Ranger fans.

Whatever happened, his rate stats went down. An increase in average ice time from 13:40 to 16:34 per game somewhat masked declining play.

Hayes scored 13 more points last season than the year before, but only five more at even strength. Obviously, all points are important, but even strength totals give us the clearest image of a player’s overall game.

At even strength, Hayes dropped from 1.86 points per 60 minutes to 1.60 points per 60 minutes. The numbers look even more stark with secondary assists filtered out. Hayes scored the same 21 primary points (goals plus first assists) in 16-17 that he did in 15-16, despite playing 42 more even strength minutes last season.

#3. Jimmy Vesey

After signing with the Rangers as an NCAA free agent, Jimmy Vesey exploded onto the NHL scene by scoring 17 points in his first 29 games. Vesey hit the rookie wall hard after his hot start, however. He managed only 10 points in his last 51 regular season games before notching a respectable five points in 12 playoff games.

Vesey probably isn’t the guy who was scoring at will early in his rookie season. That doesn’t mean he’s doomed to produce 10-15 points per season, obviously, but he does need to make major improvements.

He generates shot attempts for and suppresses shot attempts against at roughly the same rates as Kevin Hayes. Unlike Hayes, Vesey hasn’t figured out how to produce relatively impressive point totals despite poor shot attempt numbers. Either he needs to learn Hayes’ secret (which may or may not exist), or he needs to start driving the play with more authority.

Fortunately, Vesey’s overall game took a dramatic upturn in the playoffs. Though 12 games is a relatively small sample size, Vesey posted a higher percentage of shot attempts (corsi) than all but two other Rangers skaters in the post-season. If he can carry that more aggressive style into next season, then he might rise above his 27-point rookie year instead of failing to match it.

#2. Nick Holden

Unlike the previous members of this list, Nick Holden is an NHL veteran and already 30-years-old. Holden’s 34-point 16-17 season set career highs in goals, assists, and points.

Almost every sign points toward Holden failing to match last year’s totals. He scored on 13.1 percent of his shots, well above his 8.1 percent career average.

He also posted the same sub-50 percent corsi numbers in 16-17 that he has in every full NHL season. It’s hard to imagine Holden maintaining his scoring when the Rangers managed a lower rate of shot attempts with him on the ice than any other Ranger defender last year.

Holden might not and probably should not get a chance to prove last season’s success wasn’t a fluke. The signing of Kevin Shattenkirk and re-signing of Brendan Smith mean the Rangers have no room in their top two pairings. New York also has several young candidates for the third pairing including Anthony DeAngelo, Alexei Bereglazov, and Neal Pionk.

Add everything up and Holden could wind up traded before the end of the Rangers’ training camp.

#1. Michael Grabner

Michael Grabner’s 30th birthday falls on opening night of the Rangers’ season. They have to hope Grabner’s surprising scoring touch doesn’t disappear with his 20s.

Unfortunately, Grabner faces an uphill battle to match the 27 goals he scored last year. In hitting the second highest goal total of his career, Grabner scored on a career high 16.7 percent of his shots. Before 16-17, he hadn’t scored as many as 20 goals since 11-12.

The Rangers can ill afford a decline from any of their scoring forwards after trading away first line center Derek Stepan. His absence, the loss of Oscar Lindberg to the expansion draft, and Jesper Fast’s offseason hip surgery combine to leave the Rangers with greatly depleted depth up front to start the season.

Grabner’s elite speed provides a constant threat. It makes some sense for him to boast an abnormally high shooting percentage given the amount of breakaways he creates. That said, Grabner has always generated breakaways and his shooting percentage never went above 14.9 percent before last season.

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Grabner is still an extremely useful forward even if he doesn’t convert at quite as high a rate as 16-17. At 45 percent, Grabner posted by far the lowest corsi-for percentage of his career last year. A bounce back in corsi percentage could help offset a decline in shooting percentage.