Photo from Michael Miller via Wikimedia Commons

Goals are such a small sample stat that even over a full season you’ll see some raw figures that may not be overly indicative of ability. As a general rule, you can normally expect a player’s goal total to bounce back from a down season if the player is still producing shots on goal but suffered a significant drop in shooting percentage.

Here are the twenty players who saw the largest drop in shooting percentage in 2013-14 (min. 80 shots) compared to the previous three seasons (min. 160 shots):

Alex Burrows’ 8.9% drop in shooting percentage was the highest among all qualified players, and he scored only 5 goals as a result. Tomas Fleischmann and Daniel Sedin both lost more than 13 goals to their drops in shooting percentage.

Take a look at how the twenty players who fit the same criteria in 2012-13 fared in 2013-14:

Sixteen of twenty saw their shooting percentages increase the following season. On the whole, the group saw a shooting percentage increase of more than 4 percent. So if you hold shares in Tomas Fleischmann or Alex Burrows, don’t be too quick to sell.