NHL Year in Review: The most surprising players of 2016

Surprisingly, not everyone had a bad 2016. These NHL players sure did, but there are some lucky few that had, on the whole, a great year!

Continuing in the vein of yesterday’s piece on the year’s most disappointing players, we have for you today a more uplifting list of players that have surprised us. Whether that be from a standpoint of on-ice productivity, or the general feel-good nature of their accomplishments, more than a handful of players have given us some real good shocks we weren’t expecting in 2016.

So, we roll on through our year in review. Take a look!

If we could put an entire team on here, it’d be without a doubt the Columbus Blue Jackets. As of Tuesday, the Blue Jackets were four points out of first place in the entire NHL and on the league’s current longest win streak of nine games.

It’s hard to be surprised that Sergei Bobrovsky has bounced back the way he has, but no one predicted Sam Gagner leading the Blue Jackets with 13 goals. Yet, even that isn’t the most surprising part about the Blue Jackets’ success. That goes to rookie defenseman Zach Werenski.

Much like Shayne Gostisbehere last season, Werenski is leading the charge as the NHL’s best rookie defenseman by a wide margin. With 21 points in 29 games, Werenski is two points behind third-placed Mitch Marner and three behind Auston Matthews in the NHL rookie scoring race. The former standout defenseman from Michigan is also tied with Marner’s 15 assists to top NHL rookies.

And he’s making it look easy. So far in 29 games played, Werenski has only gone just four straight games without a point. Not only is Werenski gaining national attention, he’s also inserted himself into a Calder Trophy race that either Patrik Laine or Matthews were going to win handily.

Now, it’s not a sure thing at all. All thanks to Werenski and the surging Blue Jackets.

But where is Matt Murray, you ask? The goaltender that led the Penguins to Stanley Cup success and has come for Marc-Andre Fleury’s job? Well, OK, you could also probably put the entire Penguins’ 2015-16 roster on this list, too, but we’re going to keep it simple here.

The reason the “HBK Line” goes on this list instead of any other Penguins player is what it symbolizes best about the reigning Stanley Cup champions: their depth. The HBK Line — made up of Hagelin, Bonino, and Kessel — was one of the most dominant in the NHL last season. Between the three, 115 points were totaled in the regular season and a mind-boggling 56 in the postseason, which was good enough to give the HBK Line three of the Penguins’ top five scoring positions in the playoffs.

And they did all of that as Pittsburgh’s de facto third line. On many teams in the NHL, that’d be good enough to bump them to the top. Except, you know, the Penguins have someone named Sidney Crosby centering their first line. How about that.

Let’s compare some stats between two anonymous players, shall we?

One of these players is Carey Price. The other, we clearly gave away with our header. Yes, Dubnyk is currently the NHL’s best goaltender and Player A in our informative chart.

Price’s success isn’t even a surprise anymore. It’s actually one of the more constant things in the NHL, along with the league’s tendency to screw up and social media debates on the legality of hits. Dubnyk, on the other hand, is in the midst of a career season, and it’s turning the Wild into a legitimate contender.

Since coming to Minnesota in 2015, Dubnyk’s put up a career-best .929 average save percentage. Though last season he was more in line with the NHL’s average netminder, this year he’s come into his own for the Wild.

When the Canadiens added the 30-year-old to their roster for the 2016-17 season, many feared the off-ice distractions that Montreal apparently saw with P.K. Subban would come to life. Radulov, after all, had left a lasting impression the last time he played in the NHL.

Yet, the Radulov experiment has actually been quite the boon for the reinvigorated Canadiens. With 23 points in 29 games, Radulov is making the most of his return to the NHL. Not only is he adding much-needed offense to a Montreal lineup that just could not score last year, Radulov is on pace for his highest points-per-game average of his four-year NHL career.

Sure, Radulov is now on the wrong side of 30 when it comes to elite NHL scoring, but his outstanding 2016 for Montreal is something to behold.

Also on a tremendous point-per-game pace? Third-year Bruins forward David Pastrnak. With 26 points in 27 games, Pastrnak is already cresting near his career ceiling in points in about 19 fewer games played.

Maybe even more impressive for the 20-year-old is that his 19 goals on the season account for exactly one quarter of the Bruins’ goal total this year. Pastrnak is shooting lights out at a 20.4 shooting percentage and has been Boston’s most prolific scorer by far.

If he keeps up the pace, 2016-17 would be a historic one for the Bruins’ young forward.

From relative NHL nobody to an All-Star with a book deal, 2016 has been one for the books for John Scott. You know the story by now, and we’re going to talk more about it later down the road in our year in review, but Scott deserves an extra mention here just for how damn surprising his story was.

If anything, the most surprising piece of Scott’s narrative over the last 12 months has been how much fans have cared about his journey. If Scott wasn’t voted into the All-Star game as a joke, and been so receptive to it all despite the NHL’s shortcomings, would anyone have cared about his retirement from this great game?

It’s likely the league’s history will forget Scott when we’re all nothing but dust, but hockey fans most certainly won’t.