[VilleN]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

If you look at his PPG stats it looks like he's already on the way down:
Age at the end of the season in brackets.

2016: 1.07 (19)
2017: 1.22 (20)
2018: 1.32 (21)
2019: 1.49 (22)
2020: 1.52 (23)
2021: 1.88 (24)
2022: 1.54 (25)
2023: 1.87 (26)
2024: 1.74 (27)
2025: 1.49 (28)


Plot that up, and it looks like a pretty typical arc for a forward who has peaked and starts to decline.

Don't get me wrong 1.5 pts/game is still pretty freaking good. Maybe he hangs in there, maybe he bounces back, if either of those happen, it looks pretty good.
But he looks to be following a pretty typical aging curve. Considering that's pretty standard for most forwards, and the ammount of miles the guy has put on, I would say it's more likely he continues to decline than not.

Just for kicks I overlayed McDavid's PPG and Gretzky's. If you scale up McDavids to match the PPG, it looks eerily similar to Wayne's, where he peaked for for 3 of 4 years around 24, and then steadily declined.
Still pretty good, but

Hard to say we're seeing a trend there... could be dip like 2022... another year of decline and we can start to predict...