John Tavares struggled last year.
The Toronto Maple Leafs captain managed just 65 points in 80 games in 2023-24—his lowest point per game since coming to the Maple Leafs in 2018.
Coming into the final year of his contract with the Maple Leafs, Tavares will be 34 years old when the puck drops on opening night. His future is up in the air, as the Maple Leafs must decide whether to keep him and Mitch Marner around.
Coming off of his worst season in the blue and white and his future in the air? Can J.T. bounce back? Could the Leafs captain score 40 goals again?
Can John Tavares Score 40 Goals Again?
Tavares has only reached the 40-goal mark once in his 15-year NHL career and is entering the 2024-25 campaign 31 goals away from 700 career goals.
With Tavares only crossing the 40-goal mark once in his career, 40 in his age-34 season might be too much to ask for. Still, it is not out of the question, considering he will be running with one of the top powerplay units in the NHL and with either Mitch Marner or William Nylander as a linemate.
In 2023-24, Tavares had his lowest shooting percentage of his career at 10.4%. The guy was snake-bitten despite setting career highs in shots on goal and total shots attempted. To further demonstrate just how unlucky J.T. was last season, you could look at his goals-to-expected goals ratio. Last year, Tavares scored 29 goals but was expected to score 41.4 goals (via NaturalStatTrick).
Here's one more example to prove the Tavares flawed luck theory. Last year, Tavares led the Maple Leafs with 204 high-danger scoring chances, and Auston Matthews was close behind at 195. Naturally, receiving a similar number of high-quality scoring chances should result in their goal-scoring numbers being somewhat remotely similar. Well, Matthews finished the year with 40 more goals than Tavares.
That is not to say Tavares should have scored 50-60 goals. Matthews is a different animal for putting the puck in the net. But for there to be a 40-goal difference between the two when Tavares had only four fewer expected goals than Matthews and ten more high-danger scoring chances, there has to be some bad luck on Tavare's side to have that big of a gap.
During Tavares's struggles last season, there were many people saying he had lost a step, his game, lost his whatever. But really, Tavares had a phenomenal regular season outside of his stat sheet totals.
Tavares finished the 2023-24 regular season with an on-ice percentage of 60% or better in unblocked shot attempts, shots on goal, goals for, expected goals for and was 65% or higher in scoring chance percentage and high-danger chance percentage while on the ice.
If Tavares finds some puck luck this year, there is no reason why he can't bounce back and score 35-40 goals this season if he can stay healthy.