Will Jonathan Huberdeau rebound from sophomore slump?

Winning a Calder Trophy is supposed to be the first step towards stardom, but that’s not what people are thinking about Jonathan Huberdeau entering his third season with the Florida Panthers. Instead, the former Rookie of the Year is surrounded by question marks, regarding both his ultimate upside and how much he’ll help the team in 2014-15.

This is the result of a disappointing sophomore slump from Huberdeau, who saw his numbers drop across the board last season after torching the league in his debut season. With performance more appropriate for a decent role player than a front-line center, all eyes will be on the 21-year-old and his ability to rebound from that underwhelming effort.

The former No. 3 overall pick in the 2011 entry draft, Huberdeau has been blessed with strong hands and a gifted understanding of passing angles. A creative offensive player who’s still filling out physically, the tools are there for Huberdeau to be one of the better forwards in the NHL.

But after recording 14 goals and 31 points while playing all 48 games during the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season, Huberdeau couldn’t even reach those numbers in a full sophomore season. Appearing in 69 games for Florida, he recorded just nine goals and 28 points, and just generally didn’t impose on defenses as much as he had the year prior.

That’s the bad news, but it wouldn’t be reasonable to evaluate Huberdeau’s development simply on the basis of raw production. However, the advanced statistics — while only telling part of the story — offer mixed messages on what to expect from the talented youngster.

Getting back to the plain ol’ numbers briefly, Huberdeau saw his goals per game drop from 0.29 in 2012-13 to 0.13 last season. His points per game figure dropped from 0.65 to 0.41. Those are huge drops, the kind of stuff you’d often associate with “puck luck” or the like for such a young, talented player.

However, a look at PDO — a statistic which combines save percentage and shooting percentage to gauge a player’s “luck” when shooting — should leave folks worried about Huberdeau. Because rather than seeing bad luck as a prime culprit for Huberdeau’s drop in performance, it seems to be anything but.

Here’s a brief explanation of how this whole PDO thing works, from The Score:

"“If a player has a PDO of over 102.0 and producing well or playing with a PDO of below 98.0 and struggling, there’s a large, large chance that the struggles or the production is unsustainable, and it will normalize over the next handful of games.”"

As a rookie, Huberdeau was actually pretty unlucky, posting a 95.8 PDO in even strength situations, well below the 100 level that’s generally considered neutral luck. Last season, that number rose significantly (as expected) to a much more reasonable 99.4, which would generally precede a substantial improvement in on-ice production.

But then you look at Huberdeau’s numbers, and somehow, improved “puck luck” hasn’t even offset his decline elsewhere. Part of that is bad luck on the power play — his 5-on-4 PDO dropped from 113.7 to 88.2 last season, leading to seven fewer points with the man advantage. Some of it also appears to be genuine decline in play from the center.

Guys like Huberdeau often show their greatness at even strength, and in those situations, he simply didn’t drive offense like he’s supposed to. One of the most impressive aspects of Huberdeau’s rookie season was his ability to force possession and pressure the defense with creative play, but he couldn’t sustain it as a sophomore.

Looking at a number of possession-based statistics — Shots/60, iCorsi/60 and iFenwick/60 — you see a Huberdeau that simply didn’t drive the puck as much in Year 2. And while the increased PDO meant a higher rate of converted assists, his inability to finish his own opportunities (drop in shooting percentage from 10.6% to 7.8%) stands out equally as much.

There are some signs of optimism here, including the possibility that his shooting percentage will increase next season in conjunction with the higher PDO, but for someone who was so good at such a young age, it’s hard not be disappointed by the lack of progress.

Luckily, that youth is also another prime reason why Huberdeau shouldn’t be bailed on. We’ve seen great players slump as sophomores before, only to re-configure their games in Year 3 and get back on the path towards stardom. Huberdeau also won’t see the same kind of pressure in 2014-15, not with a more stable coaching staff and the presence of another young phenom in Aleksander Barkov.

So it’s hard to say what fans should really expect from Huberdeau next season, but legitimate concern appears warranted. This wasn’t the case of a good player running into some nasty luck for a few months; Huberdeau’s performance noticeably and substantially declined during his second season. That doesn’t mean he can’t rebound, but a number of things need to be addressed.