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Last season saw some remarkable ups and downs among the NHL goal-scoring leaders. Corey Perry, a known 30-goal scorer, nearly doubled his output year-over-year to lead the pack, while the Canucks' Ryan Kesler and Daniel Sedin also took the opportunity to blow past their established goal-scoring levels and finish in the top five. Still more remarkably, Michael Grabner went from a waiver-wire pickup to tie for eighth overall in the NHL's goal-scoring race.
Meanwhile, familiar names like Alex Ovechkin and Ilya Kovalchuk suffered through substandard seasons, finishing well back of the pack; Ovechkin put just 32 pucks in the net in 2010-11 while Kovalchuk fell outside the top-20 scorers with a 31-goal campaign.
The real question, though, is not "Who surprised last season?" but rather "Who will lead the way in 2011-12?"
Hockey Prospectus' exclusive VUKOTA projection system attempts to answer that latter question, providing the top 10 projected goal-scorers for the coming season.
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