Tales From The Clipped: Figuring out Jason Robertson's struggles
What's going on with #21?
Dallas’ offensive struggles has many explanations, as I argued yesterday for D Magazine. But there’s one fix that could go a long way: Jason Robertson.
He’s on pace for 41 points, which would be less than his rookie campaign; a rookie campaign that consisted of only 51 games (!). It’s an absolute nightmare stretch right now; so much so that the doomers might be checking the clock on when he becomes an RFA after next season on his $7.75 million a year deal.
What exactly is going on? Did he forget how to hockey? Was his 109-point campaign in 2022-2023 just an aberration, and now Stars fans must come to terms with the fact he’s really just more of a 70-80 point winger? How many have to eat crow for all the Kirill Kaprizov criticism, who has all but left Robertson in the dust at this point (who has 358 points in nine less games to Robo’s 321)?
I don’t really know. But there are straightforward explanations,. Robertson is taking less shots than ever; not just shots on net, but shot attempts and unblocked shots. This is in keeping with a league-wide trend of getting shots on net being harder than ever, as Wings analyst Prashanth Iyer recently discovered. There are a lot of good theories for why that is: systems being more defensive (in the same way overtime is no longer the chaos it used to be), shooters trying too hard to exploit sharp angles against the reverse VH (Jamie Benn is pretty aggro with these), the decline of rush shots in general (rush shots have historically had higher shooting percentages), and a lot of stuff better discussed for a slow news day.
For now, Robertson is in a tough spot. Will he get out of it? Absolutely. I believe there’s genuine room for optimism, and not just because “uh, but, regression.”
Programming note: don’t worry unpaid subscribers. I’ll be doing a stray observation recap for the Boston game (posted tomorrow, since Winnipeg and Minnesota play tonight, and I’d like to talk about them as well). As always, consult the calendar—subject to change, but usually not—for what to expect!