The much ballyhooed signing of Nathan Horton is a proud moment among new fans and old. A player who has a Stanley Cup on his resume decided to come to the capital city to play hockey for the Blue Jackets. I myself was excited at the time of the signing, I believed wholeheartedly that Horton brought a sense of legitimacy to the team that hadn’t been seen since James Wisniewski joined. Players in their “prime” don’t generally come to Columbus and if they do it normally comes via trade. I happened to notice though after Horton came back from injury that many people were expecting him to be something that he wasn’t, a game changing player who would be one of the top scorers on the team. While he only gave a glimpse of his talents, playing just 36 games, he accumulated 19 points in that time. Injury may have derailed the season but his production is right in line with some of his past seasons, so what are we to expect this year?
When looking at future predictors of production, especially with someone who is consistently on the positive side of possession numbers, it is best to look at one’s on ice team shooting percentage and p/60. Most recently Horton hasn’t played in upward of 50 games in the regular season since 2010-11 (should be noted in the lockout shortened season he played 65 total games including playoffs). His points per 60 have consistently gone down since the 09-10 season when he was playing with the Florida Panthers. Going down from 2.58 p/60 in 09-10 to most recently in the 13-14 season posting a 1.81 p/60, this slow decline is definitely a disconcerting development, a development that marks more of a trend than anything else. In addition to the scoring decline it should be noted that his on ice team shooting percentage hovered around the same mark as prior seasons indicating that the problem didn’t lie on anyone else’s shoulders except his own.
While admittedly the sample sizes of the past few years have been small, it doesn’t hurt to mention that Horton was still dealing with serious injury concerns during the games he did play. So what can we look at that shows that Horton may buck his recent trend of downward production? His 5v5 numbers are a good place to start, his shooting percentage at 5v5 was abysmal at 4.55%. If that moves closer to league average we can see his goals move up markedly. Another good sign from this past season were his assists per 60, which just so happened to be his highest average since the 09- 10 season. With the possibility of a healthy season looming we can also hope to see Horton shooting the puck more. While seen at times as timid, the stats back up this theory of timidness; his shots per 60 were at the lowest point since the 08-09 season.
So what does this mean for Nathan Horton going forward? Actually not that much. If Horton’s shooting percentage corrects itself we are still going to be looking at a player who will more than likely have his point totals somewhere in the 40’s. It is important to note though, that if he had played over the course of the entire season last year he would have scored around 43 points, good for fourth on the team in points. Temper your expectations for Nathan Horton, his days of scoring 50+ points are behind him, nonetheless he is still a very valuable piece of the Blue Jackets. Someone in the front office must have seen his decline in production and took it into account, but in reality this move was made mostly in a ceremonious manner to bring in a player with name recognition that would contribute in some capacity. Columbus’ symbol of culture change may not be a superstar but as a fan that should be just fine.
(stats provided courtesy of behindthenet.ca and hockeyanalysis.com)
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