Post-Christmas Catch-Up: Power Play Personnel, Miro Heiskanen’s Optimism, Kirill Kaprizov’s Absence, and Jared Spurgeon’s Perseverance

The Dallas Stars have the seventh-best goal-differential in the NHL. They have the same number of regulation wins as Florida, Toronto, and Colorado. And all of their underlying numbers show that they deserve a better fate than they’ve gotten so far.

At 5-on-5, the Stars are 5th in the NHL in expected goals for per 60 (xGF/60) and 7th in actual GF%. Those numbers have both been trending downward heavily in the last month since Tyler Seguin’s surgery, but the fact remains that they have been a very good team at even-strength. They have allowed the fewest goals in the NHL, too.

At special teams, of course, things have been rockier. Their power play has fallen to 26th in the league in conversion percentage, which is preposterously far from their xGF numbers on the power play, which are 2nd in the entire NHL. Per Natural Stat Trick, Dallas have the second-best high-danger shot rate on the power play of any team, and they generate the third-most scoring chances. In other words, everything seems to be going right, except for the part where the puck needs to get past the goaltender.

If you’re the coaching staff, it’s got to be maddening, right? In terms of creating scoring chances, your team is doing about as well as any hockey team can. And the roster is filled with a lot of players who have scored on those chances in the past, either at this or a previous level. At a certain point, I could see how you want to be wary of changing too much, if it really is just a matter of some bad luck and a cold shooter or two. You don’t want to rebuild the entire engine if all you need is a new spark plug.

Still, the fact is that the Stars briefly fell below the playoff cut line in points, and now have fewer points than the Boston Bruins, whose season looked in utter disarray before Jim Montgomery took the fall for it. The good news for Dallas is that they have a couple of games in hand (they’ve played the second-fewest number of games in the NHL to date), so they could easily vault themselves right back into a comfortable playoff position. But they’ll have to start scoring at their former pace in order to do that.

Facing Minnesota without Kirill Kaprizov (who is out for at least this game and day-to-day going forward with what Minnesota PR is calling a lingering lower-body issue) is a boon for Dallas. And given Minnesota’s 30th-ranked penalty kill, this game could be a massive step for Dallas and their power play towards getting back where they and a lot of metrics think they ought to be. Of course, Dallas hasn’t been able to capitalize on teams who appear to be teetering lately, as both Nashville and New York can testify.

Big picture: they’ve got the goaltending absolutely rolling this season. They’ve managed to stay solid defensively despite a virus going through the team and the personnel rotating more than they have planned or hoped for. And they’re creating scoring chances well enough to win more games than they have. We’ll see if patience and persistence can be rewarded before frustration and desperation demand further action, because I don’t think they can afford another 5-5-0 run in their next ten games.

***

I talked to Logan Stankoven and Miro Heiskanen this morning about how they avoid frustration creeping into their game, particularly on the power play. After all, they’re doing good things but just not getting results. And both of them had a pretty sanguine perspective. Stankoven mentioned the importance of teammates’ reminding each other to stick with the good things they’re doing and staying positive, while Heiskanen said he feels the power play has actually been looking better lately, despite the lack of goals. And for what it’s worth, the underlying numbers agree with him, as the Stars have been a top-three team in the NHL since December 14th in terms of high-danger shots and expected goals on the power play.

The exception to that positive run would be the major penalty the Stars got after Matt Rempe boarded and elbowed Miro Heiskanen. The Stars struggled to generate the sort of response you would hope for after a dirty hit like that one and a five-minute major, and they didn’t score while Heiskanen was off getting checked for a possible concussion as well as receiving stitches.

Heiskanen is still sporting a bit of a bruise from the hit (as you’d expect) and stitches around his eye and inside his mouth, though he says he doesn’t know the exact number. He mentioned that he knew Rempe was coming, but that he simply wasn’t expecting that sort of a hit to happen (not that you can do much at all when a giant player launches his elbow into the back of your neck along the boards like that). And obviously, the NHL agreed that he ought not to have expected it, as Rempe was suspended for eight games, and hopefully finds a way to stop trying to injure players.

Anyway, Heiskanen said he’s feeling fine now. He had a good Christmas with family, and he’s ready to get back at it. Some people are just designed to play hockey.

***

Dallas practiced specials teams this morning with some familiar power play units:

Stars unsurprisingly running power play work this morning. Units are:

Johnston, Hintz, Robertson, Benn, Heiskanen

Duchene, Marchment, Stankoven, Dadonov, Harley

— Robert Tiffin (@RobertTiffin) December 27, 2024

If you watched Pete DeBoer’s response to Mike Heika’s question in Utah about switching power play personnel, you can hear the conviction in DeBoer’s voice. The team has been making changes in attack points and other areas in order to jump-start the scoring, so it’s not like they’re sitting on their hands.

But I do think it’ll be worth watching players like Mavrik Bourque and Colin Blackwell, who finished the final 40 minutes against Utah as the team’s top right-wingers. Bourque has also been getting some time on the power play here and there more frequently, too. It doesn’t look like the Stars are ready to put Blackwell on the job in favor of another player just yet, but it will be interesting to see whether he starts the game against Utah on Duchene’s wing again, with Stankoven further down the lineup.

As frustrating as the lack of scoring (and especially on the power play) has been for Dallas, I do think the coaching staff is doing a lot of work behind the scenes to see if they can poke and prod before having to scrap and rebuild things entirely. But that approach is a luxury afforded usually to teams who can stay above that .600 points percentage.

To paraphrase one of my psychology textbooks from eight years ago: people usually don’t change until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the fear of making a change.

One other note about morning skate personnel today is that Matt Dumba skated with the “fishbowl,” a full plexiglass face cage. He is not yet off the Injured Reserve list, but it will be interesting to see what Dallas does when Dumba is ready to return, as I don’t think they want to carry eight healthy defensemen while they’re still accruing extra cap space.

***

Finally, I had a chance to ask Sam Steel today about facing his old team in the Minnesota Wild. Steel said the same thing Matt Duchene did with regard to Nashville, which is that it becomes less meaningful after you’ve done it a few times. Steel said it’s always fun to chirp some of the guys you know pretty well, but it’s not all that different otherwise.

I asked Steel about some of his former teammates, and while he admitted there were a lot of great guys on his former club, one he mentioned in particular was Jared Spurgeon, who captains the Wild. Steel said that Spurgeon is an underrated player whose skating, smarts, and stickwork are all excellent.

It’s not hard to see why a teammate would admire Spurgeon, either. It really is incredible that a 5’9″ defenseman drafted in the sixth round by the Islanders but never even signed to an entry-level contract could approach 900 games in the NHL with a career +121 plus/minus rating. Spurgeon’s story is a great one, and he’s an easy player to root for. There are a few similarities to Spurgeon and Joe Pavelski’s stories, and it doesn’t surprise me that both players ended up wearing a “C” on their chests in their careers. Some players just have that “it” factor, and Spurgeon managed to turn a development camp invite into one heck of a pro career because of “it,” whatever you want to call it.

For Stars fans, it’s hard not to think of another smallish right-handed defenseman who played about 800 fewer games than Spurgeon. And while Julius Honka never found a way to stick in the NHL with Dallas, it’s still neat to see Spurgeon proving his doubters wrong with each success game he plays.