Mason Raymond in his natural habitat.

So Mason Raymond re-signed today, and a fanbase went nuts. But you all know the story. Thom linked to it earlier.

Anyway, I don’t think that fans in the Vancouver market truly appreciate shooter regression. Raymond shot at just 8% last season and 7.6% the season before that. Now, there’s reason to believe that “Raymond is just a horrible shooter” but like I showed with my Jason Garrison analysis, even four years doesn’t generally predict how good of a shooter a player is.

So I took the simple route. I looked at five forwards who had a shooting percentage similar to Raymond’s last year from the year 2011. I wanted to compare it with how they did in 2012. Small sample, whatever. Raymond is a small sample himself, and all we want is a general idea of what we can expect out of Raymond.

My five players:

1. Radim Vrbata
2. Patric Hornqvist
3. Matt Hendricks
4. Jannik Hansen
5. Matt Cullen

How did those players do in 2011?

So, not too different from Mason Raymond. As a trivial exercise, Raymond had 14.9 goals per 82 games, 2.27 shots per game and a shooting percentage of exactly 8.0%. So he’s pretty much identical to these combined players.

How did those players do the very next season?

Funny. Shots per game was exactly equal, yet the player’s scored more goals. Why? Because they got a couple more bounces apiece. Vrbata and Hornqvist each had career years. Hansen developed into a strong two-way threat. Even with Hendricks’ offensive meltdown, every other player increased their production.

For the record, Mason Raymond is not as bad as Matt Hendricks.