Let’s take a close look at Mikael Granlund’s season.

Between the Olympics, finding chemistry on a line with Zach Parise and Jason Pominville and scoring an amazing goal to win Game 3 versus Colorado last year was Mikael Granlund's coming out party. He was expected to take another step forward this year and build upon his 53-point pace from last year. Instead Granlund has dropped from .67 to .55 points per game. This column will look at Granlund's season and in an attempt to figure out what went wrong for Granlund and whether there are serious reasons to worry.

Is it his linemates?

There has not been much of a change to Granlund's linemates as Parise and Pominville have been featured most commonly on his wings. The two most common variations of lines that Granlund has played on have also produced at levels very similar to last year. The Parise/Granlund/Pominville trio have been one of the most efficient scoring lines in the league. Their numbers compare favourably to other high profile lines such as Bergeron/Marchand/Smith, Toews/Hossa/Saad and Ovechkin/Backstrom/(Insert Name Here).

Since Granlund's linemates have not change it is necessary to examine whether Granlund is just a passenger on the various lines. This can be done by comparing Granlund's numbers on his own to Parise's and Pominville's numbers without Granlund. This works out pretty well for Granlund, as he has a 3.38 GF60 (Goals For per 60 Minutes) on 57.7% offensive zone starts. By comparison, Parise has a GF60 of 2.38 on 62.5% zone starts while Pominville has a GF60 of 2.76 on 62.2% zone starts. The same thing can be found when looking at Granlund's numbers with Parise and Vanek. In fact the passenger on that line looks to be Thomas Vanek, as both Granlund and Parise fare much better without Vanek.