"Bounce-back candidate" might be the laziest phrase in hockey writing. Most of the time it just means he was good, then he was bad, so he'll probably be good again, which is not a prediction so much as a shrug.
So we went at it from a different angle. We took the five names everybody is circling and ran them through our expected goals model, which asks a much narrower question: when the production dried up, did the underlying process dry up with it? A player who kept generating the same quality of chances and simply stopped burying them is in a completely different situation than one whose chances disappeared.
Here is what we found, and it surprised us a little.
The number we care about
Expected goals asks what a league-average shooter would have scored from the same shots, taken from the same places on the ice. Line that up against what a player actually scored and you get a shortfall. Shortfalls, unlike slumps, tend to correct themselves.
One note on how we counted, because it matters. Empty-net goals are excluded on both sides. Our model does not assign expected goals to shots at an empty net, so counting those goals but not their xG would flatter everybody. Every number below is even strength and power play only, filtered the same way on both sides of the ledger.
| Player | Goals | xG | Shortfall | Sh% | Expected Sh% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ross Colton | 7 | 16.1 | +9.1 | 3.1% | 7.1% |
| Auston Matthews | 22 | 26.2 | +4.2 | 7.6% | 9.1% |
| Jordan Kyrou | 15 | 18.1 | +3.1 | 6.4% | 7.7% |
| Victor Hedman | 1 | 2.8 | +1.8 | 1.3% | 3.7% |
| Brayden Point | 18 | 18.4 | +0.4 | 10.5% | 10.7% |
So all five finished below what their chances were worth. That was not what we expected going in. But the spread is enormous, and the spread is the whole story: Colton left more than nine goals on the ice, Point left less than half of one.
1. Ross Colton, and it is not particularly close
Seven goals at even strength and on the power play. Our model looked at the shots he took and expected 16.1.
That is the largest finishing shortfall of any volume forward in the league last season. Colton shot 3.1% against a 7.1% expected rate, meaning he finished at well under half his own expected clip while still getting to the same areas of the ice he always has.
The part that should genuinely encourage Nashville: our overall rating for him went up. He graded 89.1, a career high, with a defensive score of 88.7. The model watched him play well, create chances, defend, and simply not get paid for any of it.
He arrives from Colorado in a June trade, where GM Chris MacFarland called him "a versatile, two-way winger who will add sandpaper and grit into our middle-six group." He carries a $4M cap hit, our database grades him Underpaid, and he is heading into a contract year.
If you want the cleanest bounce-back bet in the sport right now, it is not a superstar. It is a middle-six winger almost nobody is discussing.
2. Auston Matthews, who was better than his goal total
This is the one where we had to correct ourselves.
The easy read on Matthews is that his season was purely about availability, and availability was certainly the headline. A knee-on-knee hit from Radko Gudas on March 12 tore his MCL and ended his year 16 games early, capping a second straight injury-marred season at 60 games. He had surgery with roughly a 12-week recovery.
But he was also unlucky inside the games he did play. Twenty-two goals against 26.2 expected, shooting 7.6% when his shot profile called for 9.1%. That is a four-goal shortfall on top of the twenty-plus games he missed.
Stack those together and the arithmetic gets loud. A healthy 82 games at his normal finishing rate is a very different number than 60 games at a depressed one. The risk was never his shot. It is his knee.
3. Jordan Kyrou, who changed addresses
Kyrou is a strange case, because our model never really thought he was bad. He graded 94.7 overall, with a defensive score of 100, the highest mark of anyone in this piece.
His finishing did lag though: 15 goals against 18.1 expected, shooting 6.4% versus 7.7%. Not a collapse, but three goals is three goals, and his 46 points in 72 games read as a letdown against his contract rather than against his underlying play.
St. Louis sent him to Washington in June for Connor McMichael, the 16th pick and prospect Milton Gastrin. Kyrou waived a no-trade clause to make it happen and has since said he feels he has "a lot to prove." Our database still grades him Underpaid at $8.13M.
The bet here is partly variance and mostly deployment.
4. Victor Hedman, and the part that matters more than hockey
The hockey is simple enough. Hedman scored one goal on 81 shots, shooting 1.3% against a 3.7% expected rate, roughly a third of what his chances were worth. His raw rating fell from 95.5 to 41.6, though at 33 games that number is reading the small sample at least as much as the player.
The rest of it is not simple.
His year was wrecked before it started. A broken foot in the 2025 playoffs cost him his offseason training, then a hip injury in preseason, then an elbow procedure in December. In March, after a game in Vancouver, he stepped away from the team entirely and missed the rest of the regular season plus Tampa Bay's playoff run to focus on his mental health.
He has since talked about it openly, including the therapist he has worked with for years:
"It just helps to have someone to talk to. My therapist has no clue what hockey is. She's learning, but that's kind of nice, too. She's not focused on me as a hockey player, she's focused on me as a person."
And on getting help at all: "There are a lot of people out there that can help you and that's what I found out. And like I said, it's not too late, either."
We are not going to pretend a statistical model has anything worthwhile to say about that. What we can say is narrower, and still worth saying: nothing in his on-ice profile looks like a player falling off a cliff. His offensive grade held at 77.9. His finishing luck was among the worst in the league. He shows up healthy, and the floor here is a lot higher than the raw number suggests.
5. Brayden Point, the one we are least sure about
Point is where the optimistic story and our model quietly part ways.
His rating dropped from 93.6 to 60.3, and it is tempting to hang that on the 19 games he missed across two separate injuries: something undisclosed from late November, then a lower-body problem in January that knocked him off Canada's Olympic roster.
The finishing does not support that read. Eighteen goals against 18.4 expected, shooting 10.5% versus 10.7%. That is essentially dead on. There is no stored-up bad luck sitting there waiting to unwind.
The problem is that he only put 171 shots on net in those situations. For a player of Point's caliber that is a volume collapse, and his offensive grade fell to 71.6 right along with it. Point himself has insisted the injuries were not the cause, saying he is working on other parts of his game.
Take him at his word and this becomes the least comfortable case on the list. The finishing was fine. The volume was not. "He'll shoot better" is simply not available as an explanation here. He is 30 and still enormously talented, but this is a bet on process changing rather than luck correcting.
The short version
Colton is the model's genuine buy-low and almost nobody is talking about him. Matthews was unlucky and hurt, which is the combination you want if you are betting on a rebound. Kyrou is mostly a deployment bet. Hedman's floor is far higher than his rating. And Point is the one where, if we are being straight with you, the numbers do not hand over an easy answer.
Dig into any of these players yourself: contract database · player comparisons · NHL Edge skating data · GM Mode