Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
That one year was a career year, but he had been well over a PPG for the 3 seasons prior to that one too.
1.12 PPG
1.13 PPG
1.11 PPG
1.43 PPG
Trade
0.70 PPG
0.47 PPG
Could be age curve, could be confidence, could just be securing the bag and not being as motivated, but really it's pretty much unprecedented to see such a decline for a player from one season to another.
|
I think it's all the above. But also the 1.43 PPG season was an anomaly, not just for him but the whole Panthers team. There were like eight players with career years, the team was scoring at an incredible rate. So people should just stop thinking of him as that kind of producer (same goes for other players on that team) and the decline is better viewed from his earlier years around 1.12 PPG or so. But even then I think the way Florida played during those PPG+ years was much more offensive, especially under Boughner. That's when they got the reputation of being a run and gun team and rightfully so, they were top 5 team in offense and bottom 5 in defense. Offense still continued under Q but he was able to fix the defense.
So I can see there being multiple reasons, new market, higher expectations and pressure, going from offensive system to Darryl's, confidence hitting rock bottom, maybe getting the big money, being the "main guy", leaving Florida and who knows what else.
Also one thing that I've never understood is when we talk about PPG players, they are all treated the same. Huberdeau is an extremely assits heavy player (about 70% of his points are assits) and to me it lowers his value. For example, everyone will take a player with a stat line of 60+20 over a player with a statline of 20+60 even though they are both PPG players. Not only because you may have two assits per one goal (which deflates the value of assits vs. goals) but also goal scorers are paid premium. So even though Huberdeau was a PPG+ player for four years, I think people misunderstood the kind of player he was. To me he was always a very good complimentary player but not the "main" guy. But still, his decline is jaw dropping.