Evgeny Kuznetsov will set a career-high in 2021-2022 and eclipse 100 points.
Evgeny Kuznetsov is off to a hot-start in 2021-2022. After being a serious contender for the Conn Smythe Trophy during the Washington Capitals‘ 2018 Stanley Cup run, Kuznetsov has struggled. An abysmal 2020-2021 campaign seemed to have the talented center at rock-bottom. In 41 games, Kuzy scored 9 goals and added 20 assists. Most telling, however, was the eye-test, he looked disinterested and often times found himself completely out of position both offensively and defensively.
Fast forward to the 2021-2022 training camp and Evgeny Kuznetsov has his smile back. In our player preview series, we emphasized that Kuznetsov would have to step up in a big way and predicted the Russian center would break his previous career-best of 83 points. But through three games, Kuznetsov looks even better than he did in camp. So good in-fact, that I’m going to go on the record and say that he will eclipse 100 points this season. In doing so, Kuzy will become only the fifth player in franchise history to do so and the first since Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom both reached the 100-point mark in 2009-2010.
Through three games, Kuznetsov looks energized. He’s been a driver of play and the Capitals have dominated the ice. Kuznetsov has six points, scoring two goals and adding four assists. A career-high Corsi For Percentage of 61.5 shows that his team is controlling the play when he’s on the ice. Kuznetsov is shooting the puck incredibly well, he has a shooting percentage of 18.2 percent which would be far and away his career-best if he were to maintain this pace. While he will certainly cool off over the course of a full-82 game season, the mega-talented Russian is on-pace to score 164 points. He won’t come anywhere near that number, however, you can expect Kuznetsov to score between 100 and 110 points this season.
Stats and analytics only tell part of the story, Kuznetsov is electing to shoot more and is taking high-quality chances. Often times in the past he’s elected to make a pass, sometimes a blind one, when he himself has a good scoring opportunity. It appears that is a thing of the past, Kuznetsov is confident in himself and he’s letting them rip.