Panthers’ Reinhart was tabbed to be ‘The Great Regressor’ this season. About that...
It appears all the preseason talk of Sam Reinhart regressing this season might have been greatly exaggerated.
Reinhart had a career season in 2023-24 with the Florida Panthers. He scored 57 goals, including a Panthers-record 27 on the power play, and then followed that up with 10 more goals in the playoffs — including the Stanley Cup clincher in Game 7 of the Cup Final against the Edmonton Oilers.
It led to Reinhart signing an eight-year, $69 million contract.
And it had pundits wonder how he would keep up such massive production.
The Athletic wrote that Reinhart “absolutely played the best hockey of his life — but some good fortune also aided him. ... Expect Reinhart to be closer to the 40-goal range this year.”
A poll by Hockey News writers had Reinhart as the overwhelming favorite to have a setback this season, with 12 of 53 votes going his way. “That’s not a stretch of a guess,” the outlet wrote. “Reinhart could indeed regress, as his new annual salary of $8.625 million increases expectations of him exponentially.”
And Daily Faceoff wrote that Reinhart’s success “happened unsustainably” and it “might hurt the Panthers a tiny bit if they are paying him $8.625 million in hopes that he’ll score 50-60 goals.”
Yet here we are, a little more than one-fifth of the way through the season, and Reinhart is not only living up to his career year from a season ago ... he might actually be playing better.
Reinhart enters the Panthers’ game against the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday leading the NHL with 13 goals and tied for third in the league with 25 points. This has him on pace for 62 goals and 120 points over 82 games, which would both be single-season franchise records (Pavel Bure’s 59 goals in 2000-01 and Jonathan Huberdeau’s 115 points in 2021-22 are the current marks to beat).
He is riding a nine-game point streak, has at least one point in 15 of Florida’s first 17 games and has multiple points in seven games.
“He’s a very, very competitive man,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “Just about every preview of the season, ‘The Great Regressor’ in the National Hockey League was going to be Sam Reinhart. Doesn’t really look like that right now.”
And it’s not just the fact that Reinhart is continuing to rack up the points. It’s the way he’s doing it.
His shot remains as lethal as ever. Last season, Reinhart scored on 24.5 percent of his shots on goal — by far a career high. So far this year, he’s finding the net at an ever higher clip: 29.5 percent. His 13 goals have come on just 44 shots on goal. Only two players so far this season with more than five goals are scoring at a higher efficiency than Reinhart: Tampa Bay’s Brayden Point (eight goals, 38.1 percent shooting efficiency) and Dallas Matt Duchene (nine goals, 36 percent shooting efficiency).
He’s scoring in all facets of the game. Of Reinhart’s 13 goals, seven are at even strength, three are on the power play and three are short-handed. He is just the sixth player to have at least three short-handed goals, three power play goals and seven even-strength goals through his first 17 games played in a season, joining Daniel Alfredsson in 2005-06, Pavel Bure in 1992-93, Mario Lemieux in 1988-89, and Wayne Gretzky and Bernie Nicholls in 1983-84.
“He’s very quiet, but an incredibly intense player. I think he’s just coming into his prime,” Maurice said. “He just plays the game the right way.
He’s doing it with and without Aleksander Barkov on the ice. A lot of talk surrounding Reinhart’s success last season was that he spent so much time on the ice with Barkov, arguably the league’s best two-way center and a two-time Selke Trophy winner. Fair, considering Barkov factored into half of Reinhart’s points (47 of 94).
But consider this: In Barkov’s eight game absence this season due to a lower-body injury, Reinhart put up 12 points. He has 13 points in the eight games Barkov has played. And Barkov only factored into nine of those 13 points in games the two have played together.
And he’s doing it without sacrificing his defense. The Panthers are outscoring opponents 19-9 when Reinhart is on the ice during 5-on-5 play. He is tied with Gustav Forsling with a plus-minus rating of plus-10.
So if there was a regression to be had for Reinhart, it hasn’t shown up yet.
“There are no weaknesses in his game,” Barkov said. “He’s playing the game the right way, every single second on the ice he’s doing it right, he’s not cheating the game. He’s putting up goals and making really nice plays, the plays that make your team better. He is a huge piece for us and I’m enjoying playing with him.”
.JPG)