Last off-season we asked what the surprise player for 2017-18 would be (in a pleasant way). Here were the results, (gulp).
Well some of that sure didn’t work out!
With the benefit of knowing what happened, I think it’s fair to say the (positive) surprises were (in no particular order):
- Health in general (Sidney Crosby and Olli Maatta playing all 82 games, Kris Letang getting 79, Evgeni Malkin playing 78)
- Phil Kessel setting a career high in assists (58) and points (92) despite being older than typical career best seasons
- Riley Sheahan bouncing back from a bad season in Detroit and putting up basically third line-caliber production (32 points in 73 games, 1.