SOPHOMORE SLUMP NOT AN ISSUE FOR THIS CLASS
Jets sniper Laine leads group of second-year players who show no signs of regression
His former coach was a bit worried.
It was a week before the start of the season and Jussi Tapola, who had coached Patrik Laine in Finland’s top league, was talking about pressure, expectations and why some players follow up one good year with a bad one. Basically, he was talking about the sophomore slump.
A year ago, Laine and Toronto’s Auston Matthews — the No. 2 and No. 1 picks respectively in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft — had taken the league by storm as rookies. As they entered Year 2, some were predicting Laine would score 50 goals and Matthews, who won the Calder Trophy, would challenge for the scoring title.
Tapola, meanwhile, was thinking back to 2014-15, when Laine was dropped down to Finland’s second league and assigned a mental coach after failing to meet his — and everyone else’s — expectations.
It’s one thing to have a strong rookie season. It’s another to do it again.
“Nobody expected him to do this. There was no pressure of scoring goals and leading the team,” Tapola said of Laine’s first year in the NHL.
“But now when he gets the pressure, the mental side of his game is at a whole new level in the second season with everyone now expecting him to score and continue everything. Now we will see what progress we made with the coaching and see how he manages that pressure.”
It’s safe to say Laine, who has 43 goals this season, has avoided the sophomore slump. He’s not only met expectations, he’s exceeded them. And he’s not the only one.
While the Winnipeg Jets star could potentially hit the 50-goal mark and trailed Alex Ovechkin by two goals in the Rocket Richard Trophy race before Friday’s action, he isn’t the only sophomore providing fans with an encore performance.
There hasn’t been a one-hit wonder like former Calder Trophy winners Andrew Raycroft or Steve Mason. No one has taken a step backwards like Jeff Skinner did when he followed up a 31-goal rookie season with just 20 goals the following year.
If anything, this year’s sophomores have built on what they did as freshmen.
Matthews, who will go headto-head against Laine Saturday when Toronto hosts Winnipeg, headed into Friday night’s game against the New York Islanders with 30 goals and 54 points in 57 games. Despite missing 20 games because of injury, he is still tied for fifth in the league with 28 even-strength goals and producing at a better per-game rate (.95) than he did a year ago (.84).
Toronto’s Mitch Marner, who had 61 points last season, has already surpassed that total with a team-leading 67. Since the all-star break, only seven players have produced more. And though teammate William Nylander is four points back of the 61 he scored last season, his plus-17 rating is an improvement over the minus-3 he had as a rookie.
Colorado’s Mikko Rantanen went from scoring 38 points as a rookie to 80 points in his second season (before Friday’s game). Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point has had a 22-point increase, while Carolina’s Sebastian Aho had a 14-point increase and Calgary’s Matthew Tkachuk had an 11-goal increase.
Toronto’s Connor Brown, who has 14 goals, won’t replicate the 20-goal season he had with the Leafs last year. But it’s not so much a slump as it is a reflection of diminished ice time and opportunity with the team’s addition of Patrick Marleau.
And yet, this wasn’t necessarily a smooth road for last year’s rookies.
Matthews has been sidelined by two injuries and Marner, who spent time earlier in the season on the fourth line, admitted he was frustrated when the points weren’t piling up in the first half of the year.
Even Laine struggled. For the first month of the season, the pressure to replicate his rookie totals seemed to be weighing heavily on the teenager’s shoulders. He had four goals on 30 shots in October. And after going four games without finding the back of the net, he told reporters “it feels like hockey is really hard right now.”
Of course, Laine followed up that four-game drought with a five-game goal streak.
“He puts pressure on himself because I think he enjoys it in some ways,” Jets head coach Paul Maurice told reporters in November.
“When he’s not playing well, he’s angry and grumpy. And then he plays a little bit harder. So he gets a little bit snarly in the game and things start going for him.”
With 12 goals in his last 14 games, things are definitely going for Laine now. It should bode well for the playoffs.
And if you think this season was good, just wait for Year 3.
When he’s not playing well, he’s angry and grumpy. And then he plays a little bit harder. So he gets a little bit snarly in the game and things start going for him.