Finding the Right Number for Jason Robertson

A million here, a million there...

Filling out my PHWA voting ballot this year was tougher than I’d expected. Just about every category had me second- or third-guessing myself, and I’d wind up going back to some video and looking up some numbers to confirm whether I was totally off-base.

When you’re talking about putting one elite player ahead of another one, the margins of separation really do become slim. The necessity of determining that separation tends to lead to an element of subjectivity in the voting, and that generates plenty of Awards Content™, because you can always always come up with some kind of an argument about why Player A is way better than Player B, if only you disregard this and focus on that. You can even tweet said argument at awards voters with comments about their bias and/or intelligence and physical appearance. It’s great stuff, really, the internet in 2026.

However, one part of the voting was slightly easier than the rest: Team All-Star voting. This is distinct from (and much better than) the voting for the NHL’s All-Star Game; end-of-year All-Star Team voting is, rather, when voters name the players at the end of the year who they believe have had the best seasons at every position: Center, Right Wing, Left Wing, Defense¹, and Goaltender.

When the votes are tabulated, the NHL releases two sets of All-Stars: First Team All-Stars, and Second Team All-Stars. Last year, you saw a lot of familiar names on those lists: MacKinnon, McDavid, Makar, Kucherov, Hellebuyck, Draisaitl, etc. You did not see any Dallas Stars.

That’s not uncommon. Since 1993, the Stars have had six players make an end-of-year NHL All-Star team: Mike Modano, Derian Hatcher, Marty Turco, Ben Bishop, Jamie Benn (three times!), and Jason Robertson. Of those six names, Benn and Robertson were the only ones to be named First Team All-Stars. The others were all Second Teamers. Benn was also the only one to be selected more than once, if you can believe it. That could very well change this year, though.