Sixth Player Trending Down
6. Zack Kassian
Kassian is another player who is slumping on offense. Before this season Kassian had been a stellar bottom six forward, providing the team with excellent physical play and good secondary offense, putting up seven goals apiece and point totals of 24 and 19 respectively in the previous two seasons. Those are solid numbers for a bottom six player.
But Kassian hasn’t been the same player this year for some odd reason. He hasn’t seemed engaged physically many nights and offense has been lacking from his game. His shooting % is typically at 10.2%, and in the first half of this season he has put up only 4.4% – that’s going to be a career-worst unless it improves in the 2nd half of the season.
He has recently been put up on a line with Connor McDavid, but the days of Kassian being a reliable top 6 players were past long before he came to the Oilers, so don’t expect any offensive performance up there to last for the rest of the season – but hey, hopefully, he catches a wave and enjoys it.
Kassian is signed for next season as well, so he may stick around past this season but if PC gets fired then all bets are off in regards to the guys he brought in (of which Kassian is one).
Notwithstanding whatever he puts up with McDavid, Kassian is currently on pace for only 8 points – just under half of what he produced last season.
Kassian is just 1 of the players the Oilers need to step up if they hope to make the playoffs this season.