2024 Report Card: Jason Robertson reinvented himself but to what end? And to what heights?

The star left winger added some, and subtracted some.

Original artwork by Ryan Konzelman.

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One-sentence summary

It was a great season by any standard, but what kind of standard is the Jason Robertson standard exactly?

A few good stats

• Cap: $7.75 million (Year 3 of 4)

• GP: 82

• Goals: 29

• Assists: 51

• Points: 80

• Postseason: 19 GP — 6 goals, 10 assists — 16 points

• xSPAR: 6.7 extra points in the standings (Rank: 3rd on the team)

Don’t know what you’re looking at and need a filthy casual explainer? Click here to learn more about Evolving-Hockey’s Goals Above Replacement (GAR).

…yea that’s elite.

Misleading highlight

There’s not much on YouTube to highlight in terms of Robertson’s defense, so I figured we’d go out on a high note, when a week’s worth of cold shooting got shoved into one playoff game. But that felt like Robertson’s offensive season in a nutshell: his scoring was like intermittent barrages rather than consistent punctuation.

Grade: (A strong) A-

If ever there were a player to challenge the conventional wisdom of the Eye Test versus black box analytics, Jason Robertson is that guy. 80 points, 16 in the playoffs, and better than 99 percent of his NHL peers in terms of defensive impact. How is Robertson’s season anything other than a smashing success? Wouldn’t you rather have an 80-point winger with Patrice Bergeron-level impacts on defense than a 100-point winger with replacement-level defense?

These aren’t necessarily rhetorical questions. I just think the data puts the screws to people who didn’t like Robertson’s season. Did you really notice him defensively, or were you looking at the woman in the red dress? I.E. Tell me what you saw from Robertson on the backcheck and his positioning in contrast with some of his poor shot selection this season and why that made him a net negative. I feel like fans want to have their cake and to eat it too here. They want Robertson to be elite defensively, but they also want those 100 points. But it never works that way, nor has it ever worked that way — even for the absolute best of the two-way best. Aleksander Barkov never broke 100 points, and neither did Pavel Datsyuk. You simply can’t have both.

Granted, they did come pretty close: Barkov with 96 in the 2018-2019 season, and Datsyuk with 97 in back to back seasons from 2007 to 2009. Maybe that’s why anything less than A- would feel like a crime. I’m not trying to gaslight fans into thinking Robertson is above criticism. His shooting was way off this season. It’s there in the numbers too. Not only did he take less shots on net per game than at any point in his career (8.16 at even strength), but his individual expected goals was the lowest it’s ever been (.68 compared to his previous low, which was .82) too. You’re certainly not crazy to think he left offense on the table this year.

However, there’s another piece of this Robertson offensive puzzle, and it’s never talked about: his playmaking.

Don’t know what you’re looking at and need a filthy casual explainer? Click here to learn more Micah Blake McCurdy’s ‘Setting’ dataset.

If you’re not familiar with setting, I recommend clicking on the explainer card. It’s not super fancy or complicated, and if anything, quite intuitive. Passing data has historically been tricky to come by despite its insane importance. Per Micah’s data, Robertson was by far Dallas’ best playmaker. If the postseason never happened, Robertson would get an A+.

But the postseason did happen. Granted, I don’t think his postseason was a failure by any stretch. With 16 points in 19 games, most people would even consider that a success. But just like with Hintz, Robertson is held to a different standard — a higher standard; the Robertson standard.

And that’s where I think the criticism is warranted. Robertson seemed to struggle with what he’s best at, goal-scoring, and what was true in the regular season followed him into the postseason. Nonetheless, I’m willing to grant him a learning curve here. Chances are, developing one part of your game (defense) would come at the cost of another part (offense). Maybe that was a big part of Robertson’s evolution. Do you shoot the same way if your mindset is prevention over production? I don’t know. But I do know that he’s still just 24 years old, and therefore susceptible to development gaps. For that, I can’t blame him.

The real question moving forward is whether or not Robertson belongs in the category of other two-way greats. Is Robertson really a potential Selke winner, or is he someone who wants to be a complete player? That’s the difference between great players and champions. Needless to say, it’ll be fascinating to watch his career grow given his ability. Have we seen his final form?

The big question moving forward is how the top line will look without Joe Pavelski. Next to Wyatt Johnston, the trio played 111 minutes together and rocked an absurd 82 percent goal share; by far the highest on the team and also by far the highest across the entire NHL (next closest line had a 69 percent expected goal share). In the playoffs we saw Robertson and Hintz next to Tyler Seguin, which led the postseason in expected goal share at 76 percent, just above Nathan MacKinnon’s line with Mikko Rantanen and Artturi Lehkonen.

I’m not terribly worried about Robertson. He’s one of the most absurd players in the entire NHL, basically creating an entirely new three-tiered system for players rating out as better than “mere” first liners.

Not sure what this chart means and need a filthy casual guide? Click here to learn more about Micah Blake McCurdy’s synthetic goal model (sG).

But as with Roope Hintz, there’s only one standard that matters when it gets down to the marrow: the bottom line standard. Will he be that guy next year when Dallas has Cup aspirations? The work’s already there.

Now we’re waiting for the results. Never fear, Stars fans. Robertson’s a real one.

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