Yet for every Brodeur or Malkin, you have your Andrew Raycrofts (2003-04) and Dany Heatleys (2001-02). Over a long enough timeline, a promising prospect may turn into a significant bust. This might manifest as a young player enters his scoring prime or he might just hit a brick wall after a strong debut.
While the jury may still be out on many of the following individuals, each one didn't live up to the promise of their rookie years in 2012-13. 2013-14 was almost business as usual with a full 82 games played for each team so a rough year may be chalked up to growing pains. Let's take inventory of who to look for next season to either bounce back or fade further away.
Jonathan Huberdeau - Florida Panthers
Opening the list is last year's Calder Memorial Trophy winner. Huberdeau entered the league like a bat out of hell, scoring the first goal on his first NHL shot in his debut game on January 19, 2013 just 3:37 into the tilt. He would add two assists to his resume as the Panthers would blow past the Carolina Hurricanes 5-1 on Day 1 and would finish the season with 14 goals and 17 assists and tied in points with the next entry on the list.
Last year, Huberdeau collected his 31 points in the full 48 games. This go-around, he has reached 9 goals and 19 assists through 67 games. To add to his woes, the 20-year-old didn't play between March 16 after sustaining a concussion in 5:13 of ice time and April 8.
Part of what could be hampering Huberdeau's production is the increased responsibility on defence. In his rookie campaign, Huberdeau started 39.4% of his even-strength shifts in the offencive zone while only 22.7% of his even-strength shifts originated in his team's zone. Those numbers have seen a shift to 34.5% and 30.1%, respectively, which is a significant difference. His average time-on-ice has also taken a hit, dropping from 16.7 minutes per 60 minutes of team play to 15.5 minutes per 60 minutes of team play.
This has all lead to a significant drop in overall offence from the kid. He has been shooting less, down to 1.58 shots-per-game from 2.33 the previous year and his shooting percentage dipped to 8.5% from 12.5% while league-average for forwards has hovered around 10.5% over the two seasons.
Suffice it to say, the Florida Panthers haven't been a good team in either of Huberdeau's seasons. They pulled up the rear in 2012-13 and are in a heated battle with Edmonton for second-to-last this season. With a new owner, Florida is definitely shooting to ice a competitive team in the coming years and if Huberdeau's setbacks progress, they might be further away than they initially hoped
Nail Yakupov - Edmonton Oilers
As alluded to in the previous section, Nail Yakupov accrued the same amount of points, 31, in 2012-13 as Jonathan Huberdeau. Yakupov also led all rookies in goals with 17 and Power Play goals with 6. He accomplished all this with only 81 shots fired on net, drawing his save-percentage to a highly unsustainable 21.0%. And of course, being Russian, Don Cherry had some words about the kid for a certain celebration after a goal he scored against the LA Kings (tying the game at home with just under 5 seconds left, I should add).
It was no surprise that Yakupov's star came crashing back to earth this year but it sure didn't fall easy. For starters, his shooting percentage settled at 9.0%, leaving him with 11 goals on 122 shots. Part of this performance is that he isn't getting ice time with quality linemates, but the reason behind that is first-year head coach Dallas Eakins hasn't liked what the young forward has given him this year.
Yakupov started the season getting anywhere from 13 minutes all the way up to 21 minutes per night. Once the calendar flipped to November, however, 13 minutes more often than not was the most he would see. He started making regular appearances on the fourth line and struggled to find any scoring consistency despite starting 40.9% of his shifts in the offencive zone, up from 32.0% the previous year. By mid-November, the fingers were already being pointed with even Yakupov's agent, Igor Larionov, getting involved. Eakins has been very clear this year that ice time would have to be earned, but Yakupov's diminishing role as well as instances of being a healthy scratch have certainly rubbed him the wrong way.
Nail Yakupov is the third consecutive first-overall draft pick the Oilers have iced and not a single one of the three have spent time in junior or on the AHL team for the starts to their careers. Not every young prospect can make the immediate jump to the NHL and find success so it is not far off to think that maybe the team is rushing some of their talent into roles they aren't yet cut out for. The Oilers have some difficult decisions to make heading into the off-season so we shall see what sort of help they bring in and who that comes at the expense of.
Matt Irwin - San Jose Sharks
Matt Irwin's rookie season didn't come until 2012-13 when the defenceman was 25 years of age. The Sharks defencive core consisted of a generous mix of seasoned veterans along with up-and-coming mid-twenty-year-olds who had spent a few years maturing in the system. With the emergence of Marc-Edouard Vlasic and his reliable two-way game, taking over anchor duties of the second pairing, the Sharks slotted Irwin into Dan Boyle's line.
While Matt Irwin's duties didn't hinge upon producing offence, the left-handed shooter seemed to fit in like a glove when he needed to. In his 38 games on the 2012-13 campaign with an average ice time of 18:42, Irwin tallied 6 goals, 4 of which came on the man-advantage, and 6 assists. He has seen a mild drop in production this season with only 2 goals and 17 assists in 62 games, sliding back from .316 points-per-game to .306. His 7.6% shooting percentage was bound to take a drop but it cratered all the way back to a dismal 1.4%.
The signs point to the Sharks employing Irwin in an exclusively defencive role. While his offencive zone starts have remained in the same neighborhood as they did last year, just north of 34%, his defencive zone starts jumped from 29.5% to 32.1%. Similarly, his 5v5 Corsi-For% took a sizeable tumble from 54.4% to 50.2%. This strategy might be paying off as Irwin's on-ice save percentage has seen a slight increase from 92.5% to 93.3%.
It's tough to call this a slump if he has been a more successful shutdown guy but what has taken a noticeable dip is partner Dan Boyle's even-strength production. In 81 games during 2011-12, Boyle's last season firmly alongside Vlasic, Boyle managed 6 goals and 24 assists at even strength (5v5 and otherwise). Since then, in 121 total regular season games, Boyle has only put up 7 goals and 13 assists. His average time on ice at even strength has fallen as well, seeing around 2.0-2.5 fewer minutes per game but he has still been lined up behind the Sharks' top-producing forwards.
After two playoff games for the Sharks this season, Irwin has yet to make an appearance as the team has gone with veteran Scott Hannan. An undrafted blue-liner will always have a tough task sticking in the NHL so it remains to be seen what the Sharks do with Irwin moving forward.
Robin Lehner - Ottawa Senators
The Ottawa Senators had an excellent season in 2012-13 largely in part to the goaltending they received. Starter Craig Anderson jumped out of the gate as a leading candidate for the Vezina Trophy before an ankle injury sidelined him just a month into the season.
Backup Ben Bishop was on hand to take over starting duties, leaving 21-year-old Robin Lehner, he of 13 games NHL experience, to slot into the number 2 role. Lehner was having a stellar year with the Binghamton Senators, Ottawa's AHL affiliate, posting an 18-10-2 record on the back of a .938 SV% and 2.12 GAA in 31 games played.
While Bishop would accumulate the better record in Anderson's absence at 7-3-0 to 3-3-4, Lehner's .934 SV% and 2.34 GAA would prove enough to make Bishop expendable. With Anderson's return on the horizon, Ottawa shipped Bishop to Tampa Bay at the April 3 trade deadline and have been rolling with Anderson and Lehner ever since.
While Lehner would finish the season with a .936, 2.20 stat line, Ottawa would not have the same luck in net or in the standings in 2013-14. While Anderson was certainly due for a regression, Lehner's breakout performance was set to be put to the test. When the year was all said and done, Lehner only managed a 12-15-6 record with a .913 SV%, a fraction of a percentage point below league-average, and 3.06 GAA, half of a goal more per 60 minutes than league-average.
The interesting thing about these numbers is the difference between the two Ottawa Senators teams. The 2013-14 Sens were only 1-2% worse in Corsi-For than the year prior in just about every situation. Their PDO hovered within a couple single digits of that golden 100.0 (or 1000 or 1.000, whichever you prefer) mark both years so they weren't successful purely on overall "luck".
However if you split their PDO into its two elements, save percentage and shooting percentage, the team had significant differences over the two seasons. In all situations, their shooting percentage climbed 1.5% this season while their save percentage dived 2.4%. At 5v5, shooting percentage saw an increase by the exact same margin while their save percentage dropped 1.4%. They were expectedly better at scoring this season with 2.88 goals-per-game compared to 2.42 last season while shooting just around 32.5 shots-for-per-game in both years. Their play at the other end saw a notable decline, allowing 3.3 more shots-against-per-game which resulted in 1.06 more goals-against-per-game. This all goes to show that what appears to be a marginal improvement on defence can be the difference between a 7th seed playoff bid and five points outside the postseason picture.
Back to the matter at hand, Robin Lehner makes a strong case for someone to watch in the coming years. He has proven he has the ability to keep the puck out of the net but he has also struggled to grab a winning record for his team. It should also be noted that Lehner, in 30 starts and 36 games he saw ice time in, saw more rubber than any of the 11 goaltenders within 13 more starts and/or 9 more games played in save for one. He's young so he will need stronger defence in front of him, but if he doesn't his development could certainly suffer.
All stats compiled from NHL.com and extraskater.com
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