The Discourse: Bias, Oettinger, the can't-be-understated importance of Miro, and a prospect report

Hungry for some breakfast salvos?

Bias isn’t a dirty word. If it is, then you’re just fooling yourself. Crazy wild guess: chances are, if you’re reading this, then you’re biased towards Dallas Stars hockey. Because of that, you’re probably less likely to give opponents credit. But maybe you’re not that biased. Maybe that bias is displayed in subtle ways, like being more likely to notice the missed calls that go against Dallas, but not the opponent.

Now, is there anything wrong with any of this? No. Because you’re a Stars fan. Of course you’re biased.

But what about when a play breaks down? Do you tend to notice a type of player, first? Like the defensemen, for example? Is the goalie the person you notice first? Makes sense. The buck stops with the netminder. Maybe you played hockey yourself, and have a soft spot for both the blueline and the goaltender, and thus — always notice forward positioning first and foremost. That also makes sense. Defense doesn’t happen with the blueline alone. Defense is a collective effort. Hockey is too fast for either offense or defense to be single-layered. Hockey in general is too complex for monocausal narratives.

The narrative you create will likely be informed by your bias, no matter how good you think you are on the debate floor. I mention this not to call anyone out, but because I felt like a lot of different narratives came out of Dallas’ weekend in their two losses.

• Dallas isn’t good enough versus elite teams.

• Jake Oettinger is overrated.

• The blueline is terrible.

• Maybe Mikko Rantanen wasn’t the move.

• Thomas Harley isn’t a #1 defender.

Do I think the truth likes “somewhere in the middle” as the nondescript cliché goes? No. I can’t stand that phrase, for one.

For two, the truth is that any assessment of Dallas without Miro Heiskanen will always be lacking, in the same way Colorado is a different team without Cale Makar, or Winnipeg without Connor Hellebuyck. Hockey is a strong-link game. That means something obvious: the team with the best player is more likely to win. But it also means something less obvious: (quoting Alex Novet from his seminal work at Hockey-Graphs) namely that the team with the best player is more likely to win even at the cost of creating weaknesses elsewhere in the lineup.

It’s too bad the power play was such a dud early on, because Heiskanen’s limitations distracted from his bottom line, shift-to-shift value. Not only is he Dallas’ best player, but among the Western Conference contenders, he’s arguably the best defender¹.

Click here for a casual fan’s guide to synthetic goals, or sG.

We can have a separate discussion about what these charts mean, which I’ve done my best to summarize elsewhere, but these aren’t games where broad takeways are useful. Dallas without Heiskanen isn’t Dallas.

Is that to say Dallas can’t be criticized with Heiskanen injured? Of course not. Bad officiating or not, the Stars had a lot of unforced errors versus Colorado, which set the tone — a tone that controlled them until the last 10 minutes of the game. Against Winnipeg, hockey’s best team got a hefty lead early, and Dallas never crawled their way back into the game. And on and on.

The other sobering point is that Dallas can’t make a serious run without Heiskanen. “But they’ve been one of the best teams in the league without him.” Again, bias. What affects your bias in this assessment? The fact that Dallas won, or that they played well? The Stars have been successful without him because the hockey gods are rewarding them. They’re shooting almost 13 percent at EV since he went down, which leads the league. Yet their shot quality differential within that span ranks 15th (22nd in share of shot attempts) — hardly what I’d describe as “playing well.” They’ve overachieving without their best player. Good teams tend to expose that discrepancy, and Winnipeg/Colorado are good, healthy teams. That, to me, is the essential takeaway.

I don’t want to downplay the importance of outcomes. The fact that the Stars can win games when they’re not at their best is pretty important. The fact that they lost the way they did is important too. But these outcomes create a certain level of bias. I wouldn’t expect Dallas to lose a third game in a row tomorrow for the first time this season, to Anaheim of all teams, but I also wouldn’t be surprised. It wouldn’t change my personal assessment of the team. But then again, maybe that’s my bias talking: the bias that the climate is always more important than the weather.

Programming note: big thanks to the recent influx of paid subscribers. Feel free to join me on Discord (that goes for anyone, of course). Here’ s a full list of all the paid posts. Tomorrow we’ll do something similar to last week, with an early analysis of how Dallas stacks up against the Pacific.

Who is the real Jake Oettinger?

At a certain point, you just need to forget about the Calgary series from 2022. Just erase it from your memory. Not only is it unfair to Oettinger for the expectation it sets up for fans, but it’s unfair to the rest of the 2022 team, who deserves your scorn for laying an egg while their goaltender had the game of his life. Again, just forget it.

One of the reasons why you see me complain about broadcasts using phrases like “goals against” to gas up a team’s defense is that you end up with the wrong image of both. It’s certainly a strong clue. If you’re not getting scored on a lot, then clearly there’s a something of a relationship. But this is like saying that just because two people are married, both must be equally responsible for its stability. Maybe they are. But maybe they aren’t. The biggest question, of course: will it last? The marriage certificate (“goals against”) alone won’t tell us that.

I don’t want to rehash what I’ve already talked about with Ralph Strangis, or what I wrote about at D Magazine in late February. The TL;DR version is this — over the last three seasons and counting, Oettinger’s true save percentage or delta fenwick save percentage (which is the difference between observed save percentage and deserved save percentage²) is just decent. Neither elite, nor even very good, Oettinger is merely good.

He cracks the top 25 among goalies with at least 1500 minutes over that span. Again: just good. And yes, I know Anthony Stolarz being rated that high looks funny, but he’s been hockey’s best-kept goalie secret for awhile, and is delivering in Toronto.

The expectation that Oettinger might change into Calgary Mode is unfair to him because that’s not who he’s been for the bulk of his career. Furthermore, the expectation that he should be better is undercut by the shot quality he’s being forced to face. Take goaltending out of the false Defense = Goals Against equation, and Dallas is 19th in expected goals against per hour of EV play for reasons that were apparent even with Heiskanen in the lineup. If this assessment feels muddled, or inconclusive, then GOOD. The relationship between defense and goaltending is always changing. Responsibility isn’t always obvious. We’ve seen this with Oettinger and Dallas already. In fact, the 2024 report card turned out to be a modest bit of prophecy.

Amusingly, yes, if you check that chart again, Casey DeSmith does, in fact, rank above Oettinger. The difference is, IMO, negligible.

So where does that leave us? Waiting. Oettinger is one of the youngest goalies on that list. The fact that he hasn’t gone super saiyan at a young age is hardly a criticism. That’s the ideal place to live, IMO: accepting that Oettinger is just a good goalie for now, with room to grow into something better in the near future.

A quick prospect report

Ayrton Martino continues to show out in college. The unsigned forward helped propel Clarkson over Harvard, and tallied four points through three games to send Clarkson into a ECAC Semifinal match up versus Luke Haymes and C.J. Foley (two of the more notable NCAA free agents) of Dartmouth. Should be a good one.

That eliminates RHD Jack Bar, also an unsigned Dallas Star prospect. I was asked about Bar on Twitter, and I must confess, I haven’t seen much. The 22-year old is captain of the team, which says a lot about his intangibles. However, in my limited viewing, nothing about his play stands out. He kind of reminds me of Mattias Backman: a defensemen I genuinely thought was NHL-caliber. He’s not a plus athlete, doesn’t have any puck skills (hasn’t even hit double digit points through his last two college seasons), but he doesn’t make many mistakes either.

Cornell and George Fegaras swept Colgate, which sets them up to play the top-seeded Quinnipiac. Fegaras didn’t register any points, but he looked like his usual, solid, puck-rushing self.

In OHL action, Emil Hemming took my criticism and shoved me in a mayonnaise jar by scoring three points through three games over the weekend. Yes, the Colts played three games in a row for some bizarre reason. Again, I’m hoping for the best.

Also, Matěj Blümel scored a hat trick this weekend. He’s not gonna catch Mavrik Bourque’s point total from last season, but he’s on pace to come close. A callup would be justified IMO. I wouldn’t mind seeing him get a quick look over someone like Oskar Bäck, if just to give the Stars a different look on that fourth line. While things feel dark for now, Tyler Seguin’s potential return will solidify the obscene depth Dallas has. With how many players that have rotated scratches on that fourth line, what’s one more player in case this one sticks? Kind of a dumb suggestion, I know. But it’s always fun seeing AHLers get rewarded.

1. Brock Faber looks bad here, but again: charts aren’t mean to be gospel, even if I’m using it as one for now.

2. Another way of thinking about this stat is the difference between save percentage, and goals saved above expected. Oversimplified, but for the purpose of a casual conversation, I think it works.