Stars Stats: Lian Bichsel takes an analytics crown, Duchene's sustainability, and Logan Stankoven's struggles

An uneven West Coast trip for a team with uneven health.

It wasn’t the ideal week leading up to the 4 Nations Face-Off, but it could have been worse without Miro Heiskanen. The Dallas Stars went 2-1-1 this month, losing to Anaheim and Los Angeles, beating Columbus, and then giving San Jose the Shang Tsung treatment.

The Stars are currently second in the division, but it’s hard to say how comfortable their hold on the position is. Minnesota is two points behind, but they remain without Kirill Kaprizov until March. Colorado is four points behind Dallas, but has a little momentum on their side, as Martin Necas has turned out to be a great fit with nine points through his first eight games. Can the Stars hold these teams off?

This is an important question because a second wild card spot would guarantee a first-round matchup with either Edmonton or Vegas. While I’m sure Stars fans would welcome a rematch, they probably aren’t looking for that rematch so soon — especially if Heiskanen isn’t certain to return before the playoffs. All of these teams still have business at the trade deadline, which means the walls could close in fast if Dallas isn’t pristine.

The schedule ahead isn’t exactly imposing. But March should pose its own challenges, less due to the competition, and more to the raw amount of games. And we’ll see if the 4 Nations tournament is the disaster some fear it could be. Dallas has four representatives in Roope Hintz, Esa Lindell, Mikael Granlund, and Jake Oettinger. With three Finnish reps, the Stars have a lot to lose if all three go into the tournament like it’s a Stanley Cup Final and one comes out the series injured. Unfortunately for Stars fans, the Finnish players are the only nationality of those polled from The Athletic who didn’t select a “don’t care” in answer to whether or not this tournament matters. Who knew there would be a downside to having a Finnish mafia?

We’ll talk more about the 4 Nations later this week. Although, spoiler: I don’t have many Opinions. While I won’t cover the 4 Nations Face-Off in depth or anything, this place will be rocking and rolling with four pieces a week. I’m finally caught up on Dallas’ prospects, so expect that report tomorrow morning.

West Coast road trip

The good news is that Matt Duchene seems more than willing to carry the team on his back. Duchene has been Dallas’ best forward this year, but if that statement needed big neon signs and air horns, then the Westcoast road trip was it. With six points in three games, no player has been more valuable. This has been true all year, but Mason Marchment’s return has added a little punctuation to it. It can’t be emphasized enough what Duchene has managed at his age.¹

Data and visual courtesy of Hockey-Prospecting.

The real test for Duchene will be how well he’s able to do in the playoffs. Nobody understands that better than Duchene of course. But Duchene and Hintz were two players critically absent in the Edmonton series. At least Hintz had an excuse. Am I optimistic? Yes. And it has nothing to do with this year. For novice hockey fans, you may be wondering why. “Points are important.” No sport misleads more by a player’s production than hockey. Because of it, no sport misses more when it comes to player value. Think of the Moneyball line. “Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players. It should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins you need to buy runs.” In this case, the equivalent of runs would be shots.²

So I’m optimistic that Duchene can produce in the playoffs despite faltering in last season’s postseason because, statistically, production rates tend to translate over the long run. I wrote about this in D Magazine when Dallas decided to bring Duchene back on a one-year deal. But here’s the key data.

Duchene deserved better. His shot quality in the 2024 postseason was even better than his career average, and still his reward for it was practically cut in half. I’m not saying Duchene will go on some magic heater en route to a Stanley Cup. But we won’t be worrying about him come crunch time either.

Lian Bichsel

Versus San Jose, Bichsel achieved the highest Game Score of any Dallas Star this season, and by a significant margin.

Data and visual courtesy of HocketStatCards.

“What the heck is Game Score?”

One of the reasons why any self-respecting analyst/writer/person no longer uses plus-minus is because a lot of things happen in a game besides goals. Why not calculate the plus-minus of a player’s shifts instead? Why not include the plus-minus of shot attempts, penalties taken, penalties drawn, blocked shots, and faceoffs too? That’s exactly what Game Score calculates. So it’s impressive stuff from Bichsel.

Bichsel will be a key part of Dallas’ next steps. In fact, one could make the argument that he has potential to take over the Chris Tanev role sooner than later. Granted, in what way is hard to say. When Miro Heiskanen returns, I assume the top four will be Harley with Heiskanen, and Lindell with Ceci. Nonetheless, I find it encouraging that on a night when Bichsel played the most minutes of his career (19:27), he also posted the highest Game Score of any Star.

It’s just one game, and it was just one game against the worst team in the league. But Bichsel doesn’t look like a player who’s backing down from his increased role. He’s running towards it.

Logan Stankoven

Let’s be clear from the outset. Stankoven is a rookie. He’ll end the season with over 30 points, which is a very good rookie year. But compared to expectations, when he was up there with big names like Macklin Celebrini, Matvei Michkov, and Lane Hutson? Unfair or not, he’s taken a step back.

I’ll save a deep dive for report cards at the end of the year, or perhaps sooner. I think there’s a very clear explanation: zero linemate consistency. But figuring out the cause and effect relationship is another story. For now, Pete DeBoer’s solution has been to give him minutes on the fourth line where he can focus on winning territory. He’s still putting in the work. But plays like this are a good example of where his game is falling short.

A great display of pucksmanship turns into…a generic chance?

He just doesn’t look comfortable making those extra moves, maneuvering into high danger territory right now. It’s there in the numbers too. In his 24 games with Dallas last season, Stankoven was generating 16 high danger chances per game, adjusted for minutes. This season, that number is down to 12. Again, Stankoven will be fine long term, and I suspect next year will offer more stability. But thought experiment: if Tyler Seguin could lace up his skates right now, would anyone be surprised if Stankoven wasn’t a candidate for odd man out?

The Beautiful Game

There’s no reason to put Oskar Bäck on blast for blocking his own shot into an open net, so let’s go with the moment when all the Dallas Stars missed an open net.

1. This always feels wrong coming from an old man like me to imply that a 34-year old professional should be “washed” in some way. Just know I have misgivings too.

2. It’s not the perfect corollary, but close enough. We could expand this to say shot differential and shot quality.