Learning From The Julius Honka Wars

And what it can teach us about player expectations. And player development.

Warning: this is a very meandering post.

Following prospects is one of my favorite past times. I could wax pretentious Sideways style about What It All Means, but the truth is that I just like hockey enough to watch all levels of it. So I’m all in: Wyatt Johnston, Logan Stankoven, Mavrik Bourque, Riley Damiani, Matej Blumel, and yes, you too Antonio Stranges. And now you Nils Lundkvist! But not every player will make the cut. When that happens, it stings. We feel like we’ve been duped, whether by the organization, the player himself, or our own analysis. Julius Honka was a special case because he taught us to process all those feelings, all at once.

If you weren’t there, you may be wondering why we call it the ‘Honka Wars.’ Well that’s what it was. Stars fans were fighting for (or against) him. In 2017, we were all minding our own business, excited about Honka after his 16-game stint under Lindy Ruff. He looked good. Real good. And yet it wasn’t enough to earn the benefit of the doubt under Ken Hitchcock. In fact, he didn’t even earn a spot on the opening night roster, despite a really good preseason…

Hitchcock ignored what Honka had been building toward and started the season with John Klingberg with Esa Lindell, Jamie Oleksiak (who was bad at the time, hence why they ended up trading him to Pittsburgh that season) with Marc Methot, and Dan Hamhuis with Stephen Johns. Honka eventually made the cut, but he never earned Hitch’s trust. The #FreeHonka hashtag was born, and then via osmosis, it managed to catch the attention of one, Tyler Dellow; then at The Athletic.

Dellow was my introduction into hockey analytics. He ran the now defunct mc79hockey website, back when “Corsi” was a word only bloggers knew. And here he was, telling us Stars fans—who have forgotten more about the team than Dellow will ever know—that Honka was, frankly…no good. I respected Dellow, but I thought he was crazy. Even now there are things I take issue with from his 2017 article. For one, his argument is one big non sequitur—just because “that seventh defenseman isn’t a star” didn’t mean Dallas had six better options—and he downplays coaching malfeasance as a bug (I’d call it an elegant feature). But Dellow was right, wasn’t he? Some of us believed Honka could be John Klingberg’s replacement. Five years later, he’s tucked away in the SHL. Dellow was right…wasn’t he?

Yes and no. Yes, Dellow was more right than wrong but I don’t believe he was as right as we were wrong. Assessing player value is not a zero sum game. We only think of it that way because we assume that a player who doesn’t play in the NHL is inferior by default. But let’s unpack that assumption. Vladislav Tretiak never played a single game in the NHL. Yet he won three Olympic Gold medals stopping some of the best North American talent during his career. Artemi Panarin was a 23 year old undrafted prospect in the KHL when Chicago decided to roll the dice on bringing him in. How many people thought he was a gamble because he hadn’t been “tested”?

But players aren’t only defined by the highest levels of play. Tobias Reider is a 29-year old winger in the Swedish Elite League who used to play in the NHL. Sounds like the profile of a bust, right? Not really. He played in the NHL for 7 years, scoring 145 points, and even getting a Selke vote in 2017. That’s only 16 less points than Radek Faksa across the same amount of years. Stars fans loved Michael Raffl, but now he’s playing in the Swiss league. Was he trash? Of course not.

Players aren’t defined by NHL experience either. Look at Joel Hanley. Hanley may never play a full season his entire hockey career, but what donk in their wrong mind is about about to talk shit about him (let’s conveniently ignore the fact that his defense grades out as borderline elite, at least statistically)? Conversely, how many NHL current and former regulars would you feel 100% comfortable calling “NHL quality”? Ryan Reaves, Scott Sabourin, Jay Beagle, Ross Johnston, Nicolas Deslauriers, Roman Polak — anyone?

If the border between NHL quality and not-NHL quality is so thin, then why are we so hard on our prospects? They’re young and impressionable, which is why I consider the NHL’s “we’re not a development league” so borderline psychotic. Even the word “bust” speaks to this carefree attitude about letting the young eat each other. It’s an ugly word, meant to mean failure, but it’s meant to mean a specific type of failure; failure that could have been avoided. But whose? For a sport so maudlin for its sense of team and camaraderie, failure sure does fall on individual shoulders an awful lot. Consider the most infamous bust in recent memory: Nail Yakupov. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he played for five different coaches in four season with Edmonton; or that those Edmonton teams were awful; or that Edmonton’s idea of development was to let an 18-year old be responsible for what to work on (Yakupov famously stayed on the ice after practice to improve his shot). Where were the adults to help him on the aspects of his game that actually needed help? Replace the word “coach” or “management” with the word “teacher” or “faculty” and you start to smell what the NHL is shoveling.

Yakupov might not have been good enough for the NHL, but his example is too easy. What about when players are a bust not for the NHL, but for their team? That was the case with Valeri Nichushkin. Drafted for his combination of size, speed, and goal-scoring prowess, how could a player with that kind of talent and size fall to 10th overall in 2013? After a solid start, Nuke’s journey zigged and zagged, even under Lindy Ruff. But it was under Jim Montgomery where his journey hits its nadir. Or did it? His defense was good enough for a roster spot (they even played him on the PK that season), but they drafted him for his offense so he was discarded for not fitting into a convenient archetype of who they expected him to be. Even though all the evidence was there…that year…to be skeptical that his decline in scoring was a red flag for everything else when it should have been a flag for more questions. But of course, NHL teams don’t have time for young players to play through their mistakes. This is a “win now” league, which is why safer players like Blake Comeau and Andrew Cogliano were guaranteed their spot on the roster even though they were never part of Dallas’ future.

Let’s set aside the baggage of the Nichushkin situation, and just consider the situation on its own terms. In homage of #DallasPlayer, let’s use #NHLTeam as our turnkey. What if #NHLTeam didn’t struggle offensively when Nichushkin couldn’t score that season? Would his defensive growth have stood out more for #NHLTeam? Would he have played with more confidence knowing he wasn’t treated by #NHLTeam like the difference between winning and losing? Would that increase in confidence have helped him get the monkey off his back? Maybe. Maybe not. But we know the verdict. Same with Honka. A case can be made that this is how his development stalled; trapped in the AHL for a third season despite exponential progress in each of the previous two, bad habits followed him just as Ken Hitchcock was brought in to install a system that wanted less of his skill on display. Honka, Nichushkin, Oleksiak, Campbell — Dallas can’t afford to go down these rocky development roads again with the prospects they have now. Prospects don’t succeed alone, so why do we let them fail alone?

I think these are important questions because I think what holds prospects back more than anything are our expectations, and whether we’re right or wrong about them — as opposed to a listening to the nuance of their identity, and whether we’re right AND wrong about them. That was always my takeaway from the Honka Wars. I still believe I was right about his talents (both at the macro and micro level). But I was wrong about his ability to integrate his talents into an NHL system with an NHL pace.

A lot of new faces are brimming with potential and excitement: Johnston, Stankoven, and Bourque are the potential superstars. And now Lundkvist. A lot will be expected of them. But what will Dallas expect of them? How will they respond to those expectations? What will they do if those expectations aren’t met? Evaluating prospects isn’t just about identifying their skills. And it’s not just about identifying the skills that aren’t there; figuring out which skills they can improve on, and which skills they lack they can either hide or possibly turn into strengths.

It’s also about respecting the fact that talent is not a Tanooki Suit. It’s a process. Understanding that a player’s talents are the result rather than the cause of their personal process should compel teams to relate better. Hockey is filled with plenty of outdated notions (fighting is part of the game, don’t pull the goalie too early, etc). I don’t doubt their perception of talent is another one; a perception that affects how prospects are treated. After all, if you treat their talents like a magical spell they can summon at will then your idea of development will be just as simplistic. “How can I teach this player to summon their talent in situation X or Y?” instead of “How can I refine this player’s process in situation X or Y?” I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Marty St. Louis was able to elevate Cole Caufield’s game, unlike Ducharme; he knows better than anyone what being talented actually means, and the work that goes into it.

For players to get better, they have to collaborate better. And teams should be willing to collaborate with them, wherever their identity takes them. Besides. It wasn’t all bad for Honka and his time with Dallas. Honka’s goal to beat Arizona moved them up 24th in the standings in 2017; which allowed them to draft third overall. Failure (Honka’s development) begat the future (Miro Heiskanen’s drafting). Dallas’ future stars may not depend on a better process to be good, but they should depend on the process to be better. This attitude still lingers—why shift Miro Heiskanen to his strongside if he’s good enough on his weakside?—but it’s not sustainable. Hopefully Dallas figures this out because they’ve got a lot of talent that’s gonna need it. That’s to their credit, just as it is for players like Robertson, and Hintz. Sure one of these prospects could turn into the next Honka. But when it comes managing expectations, that’s not the point is it?