Oilers Scoring Predictions

Since 2010 over at Oilersaddict.com, I have posted my predictions for how many points each Oiler will score in the coming season. My predictions for the 2015-16 NHL season are above. The chart may be small on your screen and you can view a larger image by clicking here.

My method is fairly simple; I look at the past three seasons of a player’s NHL career and average out the numbers. My reasoning is to focus in on where the player is at right now and to hopefully avoid career years (spikes). The “trend” column is how I feel the player’s career could likely move. “EV” means “even” or that the player’s scoring output should stay roughly the same.

Obviously some players (McDavid, Reinhart, Draisaitl, Nurse, Lander, etc.) don’t have any NHL stats or their NHL stats are limited. In these cases, I either average and prorate the NHL stats they do have (“*^”) or make my best guess (“^^”). For McDavid, I wrote a separate post about a month ago explaining how I arrived at 26 goals, 47 assists, and 73 points.

To achieve a three year average, the lockout season was prorated in all cases.

Some notes:

• As mentioned above, I justify my McDavid prediction here.
• Draisaitl, Nurse, & Reinhart are a best guess.
• This is meant as a per player prediction based on how I see the season unfolding. These predictions shouldn’t be used as a sum-total to predict how many goals the Oilers as a team will score. Obviously, injuries, demotions/promotions, and transactions will play a role. The focus is more on predicting points-per-game than anything else.

I’m sure your numbers and opinions will be different, so please put them in the comments below.