Let's yap about a potential Star: Profiling Eeli Tolvanen

It's trade deadline month!

Here’s my worst take of all time (if Defending Big D still had the old comments section, you’d get to see receipts): Dallas will regret taking Jake Oettinger over Eli Tolvanen. I know. I know. It’s something I’ve tried to contain when it comes to draft analysis in recent years. It’s easy to be distracted by the bright lights of a goal being scored. But goaltending? It’s all voodoo right? A defender who doesn’t skate well or who doesn’t put up points? Nah. I want what’s exciting. Have I learned my lesson? Probably not. But I have learned to be less easily distracted.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one. Corey Pronman had Tolvanen ranked 7th overall — yes, one rank above Miro Heiskanen. It wasn’t just him either¹.

Needless to say, I’m excited at the prospect of Tolvanen being available; just not so excited that I’m willing to ignore whether he’d matter in ways the Stars need. Tolvanen has always intrigued me as a player and not just because I liked him in the 2017 draft. Even watching his evolution has been interesting. Here’s a player who seemed to score 30 goals in his sleep his draft year, a Finnish player plying his trade in North America, and whose only knock was his skating (sound familiar?)…only to end up an NHL floater. Drafted by Nashville, Tolvanen ended up a waiver claim by the Seattle Kraken in 2022, who then proceeded to turn turn his career around; albeit modestly.

But who is Tolvanen at this point in his career? Honestly: I don’t know. Tolvanen’s presence on the trade board probably has a lot to do with the fact that he’s having a more productive season right now. With 31 points through 55 games (11 of those goals, 20 assists), he’s on pace for a career high of 46 points. And that’s despite being mostly on a line with two declining veterans in Chandler Stephenson and Freddy Gaudreau. At first glance, Tolvanen seems like a great pick. He’s a little like Great Value Mikael Granlund, able to finish and generate individual chances at a high level (minus the footspeed and postseason heroics), and like Granlund, there is some texture to his game — neither being Selke candidates, but can execute on the forecheck and disrupt opponents in the neutral zone per Corey Sznajder’s tracking data.

Under the hood, however, his numbers are more than a little concerning.

Evolving-Hockey’s numbers argue he’s a power play merchant and nothing more. This is somewhat true. Half his 31 points are on the man advantage — a spot he would not have on a team as deep as Dallas. But is this the whole story? Not likely.

What I like about EH’s numbers is that I think they’re likely to capture the extremes of what makes a player’s season. Tolvanen seems to be having a great year on the power play, and a strong impact on goal scoring. But it’s hard not to think that Seattle’s utter lack of EV offense isn’t in some way suppressing his numbers. Turning to HockeyViz, we sift a little through some of that noise. The end result? A player with a few more layers than meets the eye.

Nothing truly special that stands out. Tolvanen has strong finishing chops — it should be noted that he’s only shooting 11 percent this season, which is actually under his career average — and has some quite strong defensive impacts. He also has some surprisingly good transition ability. He’s a little like Jason Robertson in that his lack of footspeed doesn’t hurt him as much as one would think due to some solid pokecheck and takeaway ability².

Tolvanen is a classic offhand winger, shooting left from the right lane. So his fit would be more ideal next to say, Robertson and Roope Hintz, but he has experience playing left wing, which makes the fit next to Johnston and Rantanen equally intriguing.

But is this the best Dallas can do?

Stars fans should prepare themselves for something modest ahead of the deadline. They simply don’t have the assets. But I think there’s also a question about what exactly Dallas needs. Do they really need something big and dramatic? When you look at their evolution, I would argue no. Modest improvements around the margins should be sufficient, assuming that the system takes more shape.

In some ways, I think Tolvanen is almost perfect. He’s a player that kind of fits into Dallas’ makeup of precision over percussion, able to finish plays even on shifts lacking in dominance, controlling momentum on a team that doesn’t control so much as shift it abruptly as needed. That gives Dallas a player who doesn’t fix their weaknesses so much as lean into existing strengths; something they arguably did last season when people wanted better defense and got Rantanen instead. It’s not nothing either that he would slot onto a second power play unit that will boast Rantanen, Robertson, Harley, and Bourque (assuming he’s not dangled as tradebait).

So I don’t know. I like the player. He fits into Dallas’ cap once they make a determination on Tyler Seguin. The question is really: do we even know what we’re dealing with? This is man who was once on waivers, and who has only cracked 20 goals once in his career despite his pedigree. Even the fancy stats disagree on who he is. That makes him the mystery box they lost with Mason Marchment. Then again he’s about to play in the Olympics next to a squadron of fellow countrymen who will return in victory green. I don’t know what that’s worth — the sense of kinship, and a shared mission — but it can’t hurt. Perhaps Tolvanen wouldn’t hurt either.

1. The 2017 NHL Draft will go down as, yes, one of the greatest drafts in history by a single team (the Stars of course), but as kind of an aberration too. So many players picked high who were pure bust material (Patrick, Glass, Anderson, Foote), so many players picked low that became regulars (beyond the first round alone: Robertson, Luostarinen, Samberg, Ferraro, Luukkonen, Skinner, Swayman, Batherson). Maybe I’m reaching but there’s something about this draft that makes me wonder if it’ll be a turning point for when scouting departments stopped missing so dramatically.

2. Some might see these profiles as contradictory, but I would argue otherwise. I liken EH’s profile to approximating his primary impact (i.e. goal scoring), while HV approximates his secondary impact (i.e. average shift impact).