Into the Weeds: Why are Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz so quiet?

Relatively speaking...

‘Into the Weeds’ will be a running feature, like Stars Stuff, Tales From the Clipped, and How Does It Affect The Stars? This is where I’ll try to dig into the “analytics” stuff as best I can.

Depending on who you ask, Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz are having either ‘decent’ seasons, or bad ones. I’m only talking about casual fans. That’s not to say casual fans are wrong. Considering the standard both players have set as dangerous goal scorers, it’s a little weird to see someone like Wyatt Johnston show them up. It’s awesome for Johnston, but do Robertson and Hintz even end up crossing the 30-goal mark? (Both have 27 goals, so it’s certainly possible. But eight games isn’t a lot.)

There’s a lot that goes into performance. It’s not just production. It’s also the type of minutes; the quality of competition, the zone starts, teammates, systems, gamestates, or even simply where a player is mentally.

Rather than try to address everything at once, let’s talk about the nature of “tough minutes.” I’ve always been something of a skeptic. It’s never been that I think no such thing exists. It goes without saying that playing versus Nathan MacKinnon, and playing versus Jack Johnson, are two completely different experiences. It has more to do with how we correlate things.

Are the minutes tough because of the competition, or because of the leverage? Do they elevate their team within those minutes, are they are in over their head? Is something else contributing to what makes the minutes tough?

I’m not even sure I’ll answer one of those questions, but I can say this for sure: if Robertson and Hintz seem ‘quiet’ by their standards (and they are: at 2.34 points per hour at EV for Robertson, and 2.33 points per 60 for Hintz, it’s Robertson’s lowest, and for Hintz, his second lowest production career rates) there’s actually a good explanation — the kind of explanation that should be extremely reassuring for fans who demand more from them.