Six of these eight players shot less last season than the season before. That is the thread running through the Central, and it is a different story from the Atlantic, which lost its stars to injury, or the Metro, where two of them changed teams. Nazem Kadri went from 3.40 shots a game to 2.77, the steepest fall here. Jonathan Marchessault went from 2.64 to 2.13. Robert Thomas went from 2.07 to 1.59. The two who shot more, Roope Hintz and Neal Pionk, are also the two who missed the most games, 29 and 31. They were fine when they played. They did not play enough.
That matters because shot volume is the one thing our projections trust. The easiest bounce-back to argue for is a player whose shots were worth more goals than he scored. That gap is what we call finishing, and it is usually made of things that do not repeat: a goalie's best save of the night, a post, a puck that skipped at the wrong moment. Most of this list is on the wrong side of it: Joel Eriksson Ek came in 5.6 goals below what his chances were worth, Barrett Hayton 6.1, Nazem Kadri 10.9. A player who stops shooting is a harder case, because the shots have to come back before the points can, and most of these men have to do both. And one man here has the opposite problem. Robert Thomas scored 25 goals on 102 shots, a 24.5 percent rate nobody sustains, and the only reason we still project 81 points for him is that we think he gets there on assists.
St. Louis Blues: Robert Thomas
Thomas did not have a bad season. He had 78 percent of a very good one. His 64 points in 64 games is a full point a night, which is what he has managed in four of the last five years: 77, 65, 86, 81, and now 64, on a games-played line that reads 72, 73, 82, 70, 64. The 81 we project is almost entirely a health argument. He went on injured reserve on January 15 with a lower-body injury and took a minor leg procedure rather than manage it, which kept him out until after the Olympic break. What it is not is a repeat of how he scored. He put 25 goals on 102 shots last season, a 24.5 percent conversion rate, and our model has him finishing 10.4 goals above what his chances were worth. Only Nazem Kadri, in the other direction, is further from his expectation on this page. So the projection does something deliberate: it cuts him to 23 goals on 155 shots, a 14.8 percent rate, and pushes him to 58 assists. That last number is less of a stretch than it looks, because he posted 60 assists in each of the two seasons before this one. If you are drafting him expecting the goals, you have the wrong half of the player. St. Louis spent the summer rebuilding the middle of its lineup around him rather than through him. Jordan Kyrou and his $8.125M went to Washington for Connor McMichael, and two first-round picks went to Anaheim for Mason McTavish, who slots in as the second-line centre at $7M through 2031. What none of it touched is Thomas's own line: Dylan Holloway and Jimmy Snuggerud are both back on his flanks, and we project both of them up, 69 and 67 after 51 apiece. The 58 assists have somewhere to go. His shot volume also fell from 2.07 a game to 1.59, the third-steepest drop here, and that is the number that has to move before any of this is comfortable.
Dallas Stars: Roope Hintz
Hintz is the case our model is most sure about. He scored 44 points in 53 games, a 0.83 pace against the 0.88 he managed the year before, so nothing about the player changed. What changed is a torn hamstring, suffered in a puck battle with Nathan MacKinnon, that cost him 29 games from a body that had given Dallas 80, 73, 80 and 76 in the four seasons prior. He is also one of only two here who shot more rather than less, 2.38 a game last year against 2.11 the year before, with his ice time steady at 17:20. The question about Roope Hintz has never been the rate, it is how many nights he is available, and before last season he had answered that four times out of five. The 71 we project comes in a band of 69 to 73, the range most of his plausible seasons land in, and that is the tightest on this page by a distance. It is worth knowing what that confidence is about: his rate, not his health. The 71 is 0.85 a night across a full 84 games, and he has had a whole offseason to be ready for them. Dallas opens at home against St. Louis on October 2, so the first two names on this page start the season against each other. He should be in the lineup. And the part of his game that pays is intact: 19 of his 44 points last season came on the power play, in only 53 games, and we project 24 power-play points from him this year.
Minnesota Wild: Joel Eriksson Ek
Eriksson Ek's chances were there and the pucks stopped going in. He took 194 shots in 70 games, scored 19 goals on them for a 9.8 percent rate, and our model has him 5.6 goals short of what those chances were worth. He is two years removed from 64 points and one year removed from a 46-game season, and the 51 he posted last year sits between the two without settling the question. We project 62, which asks 0.74 points per game from a man who has posted 0.78 and 0.83 in his two best seasons. The case for him is the simplest kind: 242 projected shots against the 194 he took, at 11.2 percent instead of 9.8, and the points arrive on their own. Minnesota also rebuilt both of his flanks. Blake Coleman came from Calgary in July, with Calgary retaining half of his $2.45M, off a 20-goal season on 176 shots, and Maxim Shabanov signed for a year at $1.6M. We project them for 39 and 34, so neither is a star, but the 62 we give Eriksson Ek is 27 goals and 35 assists, and assists need someone to finish them. Coleman, at least, shoots. The case against is that his shot rate has now slipped two years running, 3.47 shots a game to 3.04 to 2.77, and at 30 that is the number that decides whether he is 62 or the 56 at his floor.
Colorado Avalanche: Nazem Kadri
Kadri is the purest case on this page, because there is nothing to explain away. He played 77 games. He missed five. His ice time was 19:02, essentially unchanged for three years. He simply stopped scoring: 16 goals on 213 shots, a 7.5 percent rate, after converting 12.5 percent for 35 goals the season before. Our model has him 10.9 goals short of what his chances were worth, the worst mark in the Central and the worst on this page in either direction. It valued his chances at 26.9 goals. He scored 16. The split tells it more plainly than the season total does: 12 goals on 175 shots in 61 games for Calgary, a 6.9 percent clip, before a trade sent him to Colorado for the last 16, with Calgary retaining $1.4M of his deal. He turns 36 in October, his shot volume fell from 3.40 a game to 2.77, the steepest drop of these eight, and those are the two reasons to hesitate. The reason not to is why Colorado wanted him back in the first place. He won the Cup there in 2022, the season he scored 87 points in 71 games, a 1.23 points-per-game clip he has never matched anywhere else, and after 16 games back in a Colorado sweater he now gets a full year of it. He plays the second line between Brock Nelson and Gabriel Landeskog, and at $5.6M against Colorado's cap rather than $7M, because Calgary is paying the rest. Colorado added Jaden Schwartz as well, a Cup winner in St. Louis in 2019, on $3.25M through 2029, and he lines up on the third line rather than in Kadri's way. We project 56.
Nashville Predators: Jonathan Marchessault
Marchessault is 35, and the drop from 56 points to 31 is the kind that usually means it is over. He lost 20 games from a run of 76, 76, 82 and 78, and his shot volume fell from 2.64 a game to 2.13, a bigger collapse than the points alone suggest. His finishing came in 4.0 goals light, though at 5-on-5 it was dead level, which locates the problem on the power play rather than in his hands. His man-advantage points fell from 23 to 8, which says it more plainly than the finishing split does. We project 46, and the 36 at his floor is a real possibility rather than a formality: the 203 shots that projection wants would still be fewer than he took in any of the four seasons before last. Nashville also spent the summer importing forwards, and one of them landed directly on top of him. They traded for Mavrik Bourque on July 1, sending Dallas a second and a third, then signed him to six years and $33M three days later. He went straight onto the first line's right wing, the job Marchessault used to have a claim on. Ross Colton came from Colorado, Nils Hoglander from Vancouver, Alexander Kerfoot on two years. His ice time has already fallen from 17:59 to 16:42, and he opens the season on the third line alongside Colton and Jack Drury. At 36, that queue is the thing to watch, not the shooting percentage.
Chicago Blackhawks: Teuvo Teravainen
Teravainen is the weakest case here, because he is one of only two men on this page whose luck was good, and Robert Thomas has the excuse of an injury he does not. He played 75 games, missed just seven, and scored 35 points, down from 58. His finishing came in 2.9 goals to the good, meaning he converted 15.7 percent of his shots, and the reason his season still collapsed is that there were only 89 of them, 1.19 a game against 1.35. He has a 76-point season on his record and three more above 60, so the level is real. But every other entry on this page can point at a puck that should have gone in, and he cannot. We project 42, which needs 107 shots and 28 assists, and it is asking him to get the volume back at 32. Chicago spent the summer stacking its first line rather than his: Connor Bedard re-signed for five years at $15M, and Patrick Kane arrived from Detroit to play the right wing beside him and Tyler Bertuzzi. What that leaves Teravainen is the second line, between Frank Nazar and Anton Frondell, 23 and 19 years old, and we project those two for 55 and 61. He will not want for skill around him. He will have to shoot. Chicago genuinely had no better candidate for this list: Bertuzzi finished 6.9 goals above expectation and our model projects him down, and Kane's rate went up last season, 0.82 to 0.85, not down.
Utah Mammoth: Barrett Hayton
Hayton is the youngest player here at 26 and the one whose number is hardest to look at. He scored 25 points in 67 games, down from 46 in 82, and his finishing came in 6.1 goals short. At 5-on-5 alone it was 8.4 goals short, the worst even-strength mark on this page by some way, which is a strange and specific kind of unlucky. His team controlled 56.4 percent of the expected goals with him on the ice, so the play was going the right direction while the puck refused to. We project 38 in a band of 31 to 45, and someone else agrees. New Jersey signed him to a one-year, $4.775M offer sheet on free agency day, and Utah matched it on July 8 rather than take the Devils' 2027 second-round pick. That is a rival general manager putting a price on a 25-point season, and Utah paying it. The complication is what happened next. His ice time had already fallen to 15:07, his lowest in five years, and Utah then added Vincent Trocheck at $5.625M through 2029. It is Trocheck who centres the third line now, with Hayton on his wing: a natural centre playing out of position, on a one-year deal that makes 2026-27 an audition. Matching also bars Utah from trading him for a year, so it is an audition both sides have to sit through.
Winnipeg Jets: Neal Pionk
Pionk is the smallest projection on this page and the one that leans least on luck. He scored 12 points in 51 games after five straight seasons of 32, 34, 33, 33 and 39, and the 31 games he lost are the most of these eight. What did not happen is a demotion. His ice time was 22:43, the most he has played in six years, he is Winnipeg's highest-paid defenceman at $7M through 2031, and he sits on the second pair. Winnipeg added nobody above him this summer, only Mario Ferraro on the third. There is no puck-luck argument here. His finishing came in at -0.90, and our model valued his chances at 3.9 goals against the three he scored. The 3.1 percent shooting looks damning until you notice his shots were only worth 4.0 percent, because they are point shots from a man paid to defend. What did vanish is the power play. His man-advantage points read 10, 12, 3, 8, 12, and then 2, and a role comes back more reliably than a shooting percentage does. We project 26, and nine of those are power-play points. That is the whole bet: not that he shoots better, but that he gets the job back.
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