Recent history shows dangers of overreacting to NHL preseason

It is an exciting moment in the NHL calendar as teams are returning to the ice and fans who haven't had a chance to see their squads for months are getting reacquainted with them.

The preseason is nobody's favorite time of year, but something is better than nothing on the NHL action front.

With no one getting too hung up on team records during the weeks leading up to the regular season, the microscope tends to fall on individual performances. That's valid, as there are roster battles being waged, and it's always intriguing to see rookies do battle with established NHL players for the first time.

A top prospect's preseason opener, for instance, might be worth tuning into.

As much as this is a moment for player evaluation, it's always worth remembering that it's tough to gauge what someone has to offer based on performances from a small sample against an uneven quality of competition.

We don't have to look too far back into history to learn that lesson. The players who made the biggest splash during last season's preseason generally didn't carry that success forward.

A perfect example is Marco Rossi of the Minnesota Wild.

Coming off a strong effort in the AHL during his age-20 season (53 points in 63 games), the Austrian forward tore it up in the preseason with a league-leading nine points in five games.

“He killed penalties, played on the power play,” Wild head coach Dean Evason told Michael Russo of the Athletic after a stellar preseason opener. “We moved him (up) when Kirill went out, put him with Hartzy and Gauds and clearly, just a tremendous pass (in overtime). That’s what he does. Just a distributor and he’s gonna make those type of plays. He looked and played like he belongs.”

Things only got better from there for Rossi and he cracked the Wild roster out of camp. Unfortunately for the former ninth-overall pick, he didn't make much of an impact in the regular season.

Rossi stuck with the team from the beginning of the season until November 19, managing a single assist in 16 games and skating just 12:26 per night. He returned for three games in April and didn't appear on the scoresheet.

That doesn't mean that Rossi is a bad player by any means — he just turned 22 and he's coming off a season where he produced nearly a point per game (0.96) at the AHL level. His story isn't written yet, but his explosive showing in the 2022-23 preseason was not indicative of what he was ready to produce in the immediate term.

Last year, the top seven preseason point scorers were Rossi, Kyle Connor, Yegor Chinakhov, Tyson Jost, William Nylander, Shane Pinto, and Matt Duchene.

Nylander had a career year and Pinto established himself as an NHLer, but none of the other five had banner campaigns.

Connor was a productive top-line scorer, but his point total dropped by 13 from the previous season, Chinnakhov played only 37 pro games due to an ankle injury, Jost produced a typical season as a bottom-six forward, and Duchene scored just over half as many goals as he did in 2021-22, forcing him to take a modest one-year, $3 million deal as a free agent after being bought out.

While 2022-23 wasn't disastrous for that cohort, putting up big preseason numbers wasn't a harbinger of things to come.

On the goaltending side, shining before the regular season correlated negatively with success in meaningful games. The best netminders of the 2022-23 preseason by GSAA generally went on to produce nightmare campaigns.

This doesn't mean that no one who performs well in the next couple of weeks will have a strong season. It's just that assuming they will — particularly based on numbers alone — seems inadvisable.

In the early days of the preseason, it's easy to get excited about what we're seeing. Matt Coronato's fast start for a Calgary Flames team that played a strong possession game in 2022-23, but couldn't convert their organized play into goals, is legitimately interesting. Logan Cooley may have authored the greatest hockey highlight the Southern Hemisphere has ever seen.

It's fun to watch preseason and dream on what could be, but it's good to be armed with the knowledge that the players that pop over the next couple of weeks may not have the same luck during the regular season.