3 Tampa Bay Lightning Who Will Regress In 2024-25

The Tampa Bay Lightning didn't have the season many expected in 2023-24, but were carried by a few of the stars to at least get them to the playoffs. It will be an interesting season for the Lightning coming up, but the expectation is that some players do regress from their previous season. Let's dive in.

Nick Paul

Nick Paul scored 24 goals and 46 points last season which was career highs in both by a wide margin. His previous career highs were 17 goals and 32 points the season prior. He was tasked with a bit of a larger role, playing a minute more per game, but this season he will be the third line center. The Lightning's forward depth is concerning and Paul won't have much help. It will be tough to repeat a career year, even if he is a solid player for Tampa Bay.

Ryan McDonagh

Ryan McDonagh returned to the Lightning this summer and it should change the complexity of the back-end. Tampa Bay is where he won two Stanley Cups, but he also had a solid season with a heavy workload in Nashville last season. McDonagh hit 32 points last season, his most in a season since 2018-19 and just the second time he even reached 30 points since 2016-17. He will be behind Victor Hedman and the forward depth isn't great as mentioned above, so other than his pretty solid defensive game, the 35-year-old should decline at least a bit overall.

Nikita Kucherov

After a season like the one Nikita Kucherov had, scoring 44 goals and 144 points, how can he not regress just a little bit. While I expect him to score as many goals as he did, recording 100 assists in a season has been done very rarely over the course of NHL history. If the Lightning's star stays healthy, 100 points is no doubt, even pushing 125-130, but the team also got a little worse and he's a year older. We will see how he can respond after another impressive Art Ross Trophy win.