Quote:
Originally Posted by Ped
Why would you think 20+ is unrealistic? This guy has scored 20 goals in every single season he's been in the league. He may not have been a 60-point guy anymore, but he clearly was expected to continue scoring 20 and paid as such.
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Just based off historical scoring patterns for good but not great goal scorers 31 or older. Great players like Iginla can slightly buck this trend (although even he experienced a roughly 13 percent reduction in goals per game from 31-35 compared with his 20's) but good players see a significant drop as a general rule.
If he was signed to score 20+ that is because BT thought that Neal would be different than most good goal scorers in their 30's. A comparable in my opinion would be Patrick Sharp. Between ages 26-30 over an 82 game average he scored at a rate that equaled 35 goals a year. 31-35 he scored at a rate that equaled 21.4 goals a year, basically a 39 percent reduction.
James Neal scored at a rate equal to 30.6 goals per 82 games. If he experiences a similar drop off to Sharp he gets a 18.7 average per 82 games played. I just think that average is a more likely 82 game average, given Neal's propensity of getting injured, I would suggest that would mean 15 actual goals a year on average.
Neal has missed on average 15 percent of every season over the past 5 years (averaging just under 70 games a season).
In order to average over 20 goals a season one of the following two things would have to happen
1) Neal misses no games - He only experiences a 32 percent reduction in goals scored
2) He misses his average of 12 games a season - He experiences roughly a 21 percent reduction in productivity.
Given guys like Iginla experienced a 13 percent reduction between 31-35 compared to their 20's (and a 21.8 percent reduction compared to 26-30) I think a reduction is to be expected. I would suggest a minimum of a 30 percent reduction), which given the average of missed games would result in a 18 goal average.
I obviously think the reduction will be closer to the Sharp reduction, which brings it to a 16 goal average.