Are the Stars Contenders? Part Two (and Other Stray Observations)
I stand by what I said. With a few asterisks.
As I wrote last week, I do believe the Dallas Stars are contenders. “There’s a ‘but’ in there somewhere isn’t there?” Well yes. They’re not better than Colorado in the West or Boston in the East. Their forward depth needs a player or two, and the blueline is starting to leak.
But contenders don’t need to be perfect up and down the lineup. They don’t even need to be able to win key matchups (unless you’re the Toronto Maple Leafs, in which case every playoff round is a “key matchup”). Except for Tampa, name me a team within the last 10 years that was perfect. LA? Didn’t have enough shooting talent. Chicago? Close, but I doubt you could name a forward that wasn’t Toews, Kane, or Hossa during their run. Pittsburgh? Like Colorado, their bluelines were considered too small for the demolition derby of the playoffs. Perfection rarely wins championships. And Dallas isn’t perfect.
We’ve already seen just how far imperfection can take this Stars squad. They’re better where it counts. Jake Oettinger can outduel most goalies. For 24 minutes a night, Miro Heiskanen can outduel the most talented opposing forwards. For 17 minutes a game, the best forward trio in the league can outduel opposing defenses. That’s a hell of a thing to hang over an opponent. Hockey is a strong-link game, and their success so far feels like a validation of this phenomenon: as long as their best players are their best players, as the cliche goes, they’re in it.
“But….” But their depth. On paper it seems fine. Sochi Benn seems to be alive and well. Tyler Seguin is putting up points. Mason Marchment is solid. Nils Lundkvist is solid (I know: we’ll get to that later). Ty Dellandrea and Wyatt Johnston will only get better, and they’re already looking good. Except production and performance are not the same thing. It’s funny. People will criticize good analytics from a player struggling to produce (see Valeri Nichushkin) but can’t muster that same strength to criticize good production (see Alex Chiasson). Dallas is getting good production, but I’d argue that they’re not getting good performances from their depth.
Marchment-Seguin-Gurianov are controlling only 46 percent of the team’s on-ice shot quality (xGF%). Benn-Johston-Dellandrea are better at 51 percent, but it’s supported entirely by the offense they generate. They’re expected to give up nearly three goals per 60 minutes of EV play, which is a team worst. Defensively, the Heiskanen-Miller pair is the only duo breaking even in terms of controlling shot quality. Everyone else is well below 50 percent in expected goal share. Pete DeBoer has iced five defense pairings for at least 75 minutes and Ryan Suter is on three of them. If Suter is supposed to be defensive spackle, it’s not working. However, this isn’t just about Suter. Jani Hakanpaa is struggling too. If we’re including DeBoer’s analysis for the sake of argument, so are two players who’ve since been healthy scratched: Lundkvist and Colin Miller.
This probably explains why Dallas is trending in the wrong direction as a team that’s able to outduel opponents in the shot quality department. They’re not doing bad. But they’re on the precipice of becoming average overall. For as dominant as they were early on, they’ve been the complete opposite lately.
You might be thinking “holy crap, why haven’t they cratered?” Again: performance versus production. Despite struggling to outperform opponents, they’re shooting over 11 percent in the month of November: just above the high octane New Jersey Devils, and just below the super overachieving Seattle Kraken. Conversely, they were 11th in shooting percentage through the month of October at 9 percent. So why am I not walking back on the Stars as contenders argument?
Because there’s more to figuring out a team’s goodness or badness than how high or low their xG is at any given point. Micah Blake McCurdy recently published a new visual for “luck.” By looking at the gap between expected goals and actual goals, and whether that difference has been leveraged in the standings — are they getting paid (y axis) for the work they’re doing (x axis)? — we get a sense of whether their scoring is timely. I recommend reading Micah’s entire breakdown because it’s clearer, more thorough, and jampacked with more info for added context. Here, Dallas rates extremely well.
In other words, they’re not just racking up goals. They’re scoring when they need to. Micah has a quadrant for “clutch” because he believes clutch scoring is a team-wide phenomenon instead of an individual one. I never actually thought it about that way, but it makes intuitive sense upon reflection; groups need to come through when the chips are down, and those groups need to be in a position to do so — not just individuals (it was easy to blame Kari Lehtonen for the soft goals he’d let in at what seemed like the worst times, but what about the defense in front of him?). It’s also worth noting that Dallas hasn’t leveraged good goaltending into wins. They’re considered unlucky in this regard. Which also makes sense. Dallas hasn’t won any 2-1 or 1-0 games. But they will (well, unless scoring continues its upward trend).
Despite some strong words, I am cautious (I’m not pretending like a month and a half is all the evidence we need to make that determination). Any team built so heavily at the top will struggle if the top does. And it’s possible we’ve underestimated the problems with Dallas’ depth. But so far, it’s hard to find the fault in these Stars (ho, ho): their best players are their best players, and the rest are chipping in. It’s hard to lose with that formula.
Stray Observations:
I’ve said my peace on the Roope Hintz contract: it’s an insane bargain. Apparently, no one’s allowed to make more than Heiskanen in the flat cap era. That’s a hell of a Jedi mind trick, Mr. Nill.
Unless it continues, I’ll bite me tongue on the Lundkvist scratch. This is simply standard practice in the NHL. If someone needs to sit, it’s always the youth taking the first punch. I don’t agree with it, but it’s understandable enough: scratching a young player learning the ropes doesn’t affect team morale. But scratching a veteran absolutely would. That’s never a good sign. Remember Kevin Hayes in Philly when Keith Yandle was scratched? It doesn’t help that Lundkvist, now that he’s off the second unit, doesn’t play special teams. Granted, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy there since he absolutely deserves that spot over Suter but that’s another argument for another time.
One player who seems to be benefiting from the coaching change that doesn’t get talked about enough is Esa Lindell. Listen: I’ll be the first to admit Lindell is a player whose perception outsizes his actual performance, and I’ve led the charge on this. I’m not doing an aboutface here: his PK numbers are still bad, for example. But he’s had some offensive outbursts (which makes sense; that’s the player they drafted), and his underlying numbers look good. He’s also not icing the puck at the same rate he used to. Cool!
I’m not sure Benn is gonna slow down. He’s got one of the strongest impact numbers on the PP, his defensive numbers at even strength are getting better, and if you took away his secondary assists he’d still have 20 points. It’s kind of incredible.
If I’m right about Dallas, then December should be a good month. They have 15 games, and only six of them are against teams currently in a playoff spot (TOR, NJ, EDM, CAR, DET, and PIT). Even then Toronto and New Jersey are the only real hard hitters (we an include Carolina I guess, although they’ve kind of struggled). They have two games against Minnesota, which I think could be the games most illustrative of how Dallas is trending, and if Minnesota is getting better. I’m not sold in Winnipeg, so if they drop out, don’t be surprised if it’s Colorado at the top come playoff time (still missing Landeskog, Nuke, and Byram), and Dallas vs. Minnesota below. Who doesn’t love bad blood?
If you’ve ever wondered how proprietary data compares to public xG models.
Something interesting. SportLogiq, a proprietary analytics service, has been contributing weekly power rankings to TSN that include all situations xGoal +/- per game. Here's how the numbers compare to a public model (EH): https://t.co/ISsgnuguV4JFresh @JFreshHockey