Why These Players Are Strong Breakout Candidates for the 2016-17 NHL Season

This is part of VICE Sports' 2016 NHL preview coverage. You can read all our stories here.

Every season in the NHL, young players who have shown promise finally breakout to their true potential. This can be due to age and experience, taking offseason training more seriously, or a player is simply given more ice time in a better situation.

Players can breakout in different ways as well, with the most often noticed being offensive production, but a player can also burst onto the scene with a great two-way possession game. Offensive production, however, is what gets people most excited, so that's what we're going to look at.

These are the three players who jump out at me as ones to watch for breakout seasons. We'll also cap the piece off with an honourable mention section, where I hit on three more.

The young Canadiens defenceman has struggled to consistently find a role in Montreal, having some success for brief periods in the top-two pairings only to be sent back down the lineup to the third pairing, at times even getting scratched.

With the acquisition of Shea Weber, however, Beaulieu's smooth skating has become an asset that the Canadiens need, as Andrei Markov's skill set doesn't mesh as well with Weber. Beaulieu has an opportunity to fit into the Canadiens' version of the Roman Josi role, which will give him more freedom to make plays with the puck. Last season was Beaulieu's best offensively, but his lack of ice time held back his raw totals significantly.

An even bigger opportunity for Beaulieu is on the powerplay, where he may get time on the top unit with Weber. This was a bit of a surprise to see in the Canadiens' last preseason game, as most assumed that Markov would be the setup man for Weber, but there's some logic in trying it out.

Weber likes to aggressively pinch in the defensive zone, which would leave the slow-skating Markov exposed as the last man back if things go wrong. Jeff Petry has the speed to play that role with Weber, but he's a much more efficient shooter than passer, which leaves Beaulieu as a strong option.

Using Beaulieu with Weber, and Markov with Petry, gives the Canadiens two solid setups for the back end of each powerplay. That could lead to a huge improvement on his 19 points in 64 games last season.

Once considered to possibly be the best offensive talent in the 2012 NHL draft, Teravainen has fallen behind his peers while struggling to get offensive opportunities on the star-studded Chicago Blackhawks. His trade to the Carolina Hurricanes, though, may afford him with the opportunity to truly breakout.

Scoring 35 points in 78 games last season may not sound like much, but in the modern NHL that's solid second-line production for a winger. On the Hurricanes, Teravainen fits into a young, core group of forwards—including Jeff Skinner, Victor Rask, and Elias Lindholm—where he'll get plenty of ice time.

Teravainen has worked on improving his shot rate, but where he truly excels is playmaking, and that may be a perfect fit with Rask and Skinner, both of whom prefer to shoot the puck. Combine Teravainen's new opportunity with the fact that he had a bewilderingly low 5.50 on-ice shooting percentage last season, and the points may begin to flow at a serious rate.

I'm cheating in a way including Kadri, because he's already had a breakout year before, but he's due to have a serious bounce-back season that should establish a new career standard for him. It's strange to say a player who led their team in points last season is due to breakout, but everything points that way for Kadri.

Based on his numbers, Kadri is actually trending downward in terms of production, but it's important to note that each successive year, the team around him has been less talented than before. This season, the Maple Leafs will have an injection of offensive talent that's almost unprecedented with Auston Matthews, William Nylander, and Mitch Marner up front, and Nikita Zaitsev creating offence from the blueline.

Keeping that in mind, we can also see that Kadri is coming off a year with a career low personal shooting percentage of 6.5 percent (only 4.6 percent at even strength), a career low on-ice team shooting percentage of 5.74 percent, and a career low IPP (percentage of on-ice goals a player is credited for a point with) of 60.6.

With opponents focused more on Matthews, and a more versatile attack in Toronto, Kadri should be in for a career season.

Nick Bjugstad: With Jonathan Huberdeau out for three-to-four months, Bjugstad will likely get more powerplay time and be counted on to produce more offence, once he himself returns from injury. Combine that with his career low even strength on-ice shooting percentage and IPP last season, and he should be in for a big year. Bjugstad is expected to miss at least a month with a broken hand.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins: Healthy for the first time in a couple years, Nugent-Hopkins will be playing a full season with checkers focused on shutting down Connor McDavid, giving him more space to be creative offensively than ever before.

Elias Lindholm: Like his new teammate Teravainen, Lindholm has a lot of offensive potential that hasn't quite revealed itself at the NHL level. With the Hurricanes' young guns a year older, it becomes more and more likely that their offence starts catching up to their stellar possession game.