Taking a Look at Every Forward on the Dallas Stars after 12 Games

Let's see how each of the gents up front is doing, 15% of the way through the regular season

The Stars are sitting at a comfortable-enough .625 points percentage. That’s good for 5th place in the Western Conference, where the top eight teams make the playoffs.

After 12 games, the Stars are 15% of the way to the end of the season. That seems both early and not-all-that-early-anymore. If you want to find things to panic about, you can find them in bulk. On the other hand, if you wanted to see the Stars recover from that three-game losing streak a little while ago, they’ve responded with a six-game points streak, albeit one put together in unconventional fashion.

The Stars are 3-0-3 since October 23. During that span, the Stars have been:

• 29th in goals (2.17 per game)

• T-1st in goals allowed (2.00 per game)

• 32nd in 5v5 goals

• 3rd in 5v5 goals allowed

• 32nd in 5v5 shot attempts

• 28th in 5v5 shot attempts allowed

• 1st in goaltending (.927 Sv%)

• 5th on the power play (33%)

It’s been a gas, in other words.

But enough about trying to evaluate the team as a whole. A dozen games seems like a great point at which to take a survey of the team as a collection of individuals—or at least the forwards, given how many injuries up front the Stars have been dealing with.

Let’s start with the raw numbers before we look at each Stars forward, one at a time.

Team Leaderboard

(This is much easier to view at its home on Hockey-Reference, of course. But you can click and zoom in on this, if you like.)

Mikko Rantanen, Right Wing

Rantanen is one of three players absolutely carrying the Stars’ offense so far. He’s 1st on the team in points, 1st in assists, 2nd in goals…and 2nd in penalty minutes, just one five-minute major behind Alex Petrovic.

He’s also 1st in power play assists, by a mile. Rantanen has 7 helpers on the power play, and the absent Roope Hintz has 5. Nobody else has more than 3. Rantanen is basically quarterbacking the power play from his spot below the goal line, and it’s working: the Stars have the 4th-best power play in the NHL.

Rantane is also getting a ton of ice time. Remember last year, when Pete DeBoer was looking for ways to juice Rantanen’s minutes in a roll-four-lines approach? Back then, Rantanen just barely got north of 19 minutes per night in the regular season, then climbed to 20:46 in the playoffs.

This season, Rantanen is averaging 21:35 per night, much more in the neighborhood of what he was averaging back in Colorado. We’ll see how he bears up under the more top-heavy usage of Glen Gulutzan.

Wyatt Johnston, Center

Last postseason, Johnston was the only other forward besides Rantanen to play more than 18 minutes per night, averaging 19:22, around 30 seconds higher than his season average.

This season, Johnston has been playing 21:34 per night—one second behind Rantanen. That’s helped him lead the team in goals, with 7.

If Johnston can handle these heavy minutes, he’s going to have a career year. If he can’t…it’s probably best not to think about what problems that creates for Dallas, as Johnston is basically the Heiskanen of the forward group (or maybe that title is better assigned to Roope Hintz, about whom more in a moment).

If I had my druthers, I would probably keep Johnston off heavy penalty kill duty, particularly with his increased usage this year. But with Roope Hintz already out of the mix for the moment, the Stars are probably not going to do that any time soon.

Jason Robertson, Left Wing

For a player who owns the highest-scoring season in Dallas Stars history, Robertson has been shockingly quiet to start the season. A career 15% shooter, Robertson is converting shots on goal at just a 6% rate so far this year, scoring just 3 goals while playing the bulk of his minutes with Johnston and/or Rantanen. How crazy is that?

Crazier still is that Robertson has just one even-strength goal in 12 games to date. And despite sometimes getting tagged with the unfair reputation of being a power play merchant, Robertson has actually been an extremely reliable even-strength scorer in his career.

Here are Jason Robertson’s even-strength goal totals of the last four years:

‘21-22: 28 (16th in the NHL)
‘22-23: 33 (6th in the NHL)
’23-24: 20 (62nd in the NHL)
’24-25: 26 (26th in the NHL)

As we saw last year, however, Robertson is capable of heating up at any moment. And once he gets hot, the goals can come in bunches.

The good news is that Robertson is getting the most offensive-zone starts of anyone on the team, so it’s not like Gulutzan isn’t setting him up for success. He also owns the third-best xGF% on the team, so all told, the lull is probably just a fluke as he gets used to some new system approaches and different linemates. Bet against Jason Robertson’s scoring at your own peril.

Roope Hintz, Center