Viewed through the lens of his previous three seasons, Joel Ward’s 2016-17 campaign was a bit of a disappointment. He scored less than 30 points for the first time in a regular length season since 2010-11, and scored less than 19 goals for the first time since 2011-12.
Yet, it was probably naive to expect Ward to maintain that level of play. After all, Ward’s last three seasons were atypical given what we know about player aging: players rarely have their best three-season-stretch at in their early-to-mid-30s as Ward had done.
Plus, he scored on the third-highest percentage of shots of his career last season (15.