Rich, your comment about Kuznetsov sent me to the statistics, and restarted a thought process I hadn't addressed in awhile.
One thing I have noticed in the past is that shooting percentage in the NHL can be a weirdly variable statistic. You think you know who the most dangerous players and teams are, but players AND teams can go through unexplained scoring droughts, where nothing seems to go in, for whatever reasons. And then the next season, right back to normal. And conversely, a player or team can have a hot streak, and it CAN last for an entire season. Shooting percentage seems to be one of those statistics where notable outliers occur pretty often.
Kuzy hasn't scored much this season, and when I took a look at his statistics I sort of expected to see some kind of feedback loop, where for whatever reason, loss of confidence, laziness, whatever, his shot totals would be down. It wasn't that way at all - Kuzy's shots per game are almost exactly on his career average. But his shooting percentage this year is a terrible 5.8 percent, about half his career average and FAR below any of his previous seasons. Actually, Kuzy has been a pretty consistent shooter throughout the years, so this season for him has been one of those extreme outliers. If he had shot at his career average percentage he'd have 13 or 14 goals at this point and in line for his usual 20-goal season total. So far, it appears that it has been one of those freakish years for him.
I notice that LaViolette has cut his minutes recently. I wonder if other parts of his game has suffered as much as his scoring?
