The 2024-25 Dallas Stars Quarterly Report

We’re now 20 games into the season with Thanksgiving looming, as it does. The Dallas Stars are 13-7-0, good for 9th in the NHL in points and 8th in points percentage, with the 5th-best goal-differential in the league.

But because the Stars play in the Central Division, they are a distant 3rd place, ten points behind the Jets. Maybe you’re fine with that, given how little it gained the Stars last year to finish atop the Western Conference. Or maybe you think it’s the Stars who should be 18-4-0 like Winnipeg, and you’ve been massively disappointed with their start. Maybe you’re actually preparing to drive through awful traffic tonight in order to see family, and none of this matters right now because you’re just looking at your phone in hopes of forgetting about the crushing weight of logistics for just one second on your lunch break, and I’ve now brought that all back. Sorry, I guess.

Anyway, let’s take a look at where the Stars are, what we can expect to change or stay the same, and how they measure up to where they ought to be, in your very judgmental fan opinion.

For context, the Stars on this date last year were almost exactly where they are now. They started out 12-5-2, and largely stayed at that “two wins for every regulation loss” ratio until Leap Day, when they finished the season on what can only be called a Winnipegian pace, going 17-4-0 right after trading for Chris Tanev at the deadline.

In other words, the Stars have spent the first quarter of this season on the exact same pace as they did for the first three quarters of last season, which is to say, in the neighborhood of a .650 points percentage. Last year, the Stars looked like they were peaking at the perfect time, and it’s possible that’s precisely how they were able to defeat both Vegas and Colorado in hard-fought series before eventually falling to Edmonton, who had basically gotten two warm-up rounds before Dallas’s power play ran out of gas.

Now, how fans feel about a team has everything to do with expectations, not just performance. For instance, the Buffalo Sabres have 23 points, and are clinging to a playoff spot right now. And while I hesitate to point to Buffalo for any positive feelings, it’s worth noting that they have overcome early power play struggles to play their best hockey of the season. Meanwhile, the Boston Bruins also have 23 points, and they just fired their coach. The New York Rangers have 25 points, and they’re rumored to be looking to trade Chris Kreider, who is on a 35-goal pace for the season.

So, for the Stars, how you feel about their record is relative. I can tell you that, historically speaking, 13-7-0 is a perfectly acceptable start for just about any team, as it equates to a 107-point pace. That’s generally good for 2nd or 3rd in a division, and who would complain about that, given how uncertain any season can be?

But how you feel about their record is almost certainly tied to how many of their games you’ve watched, because the drama of the performances themselves is what really inspires hope or despair in our hearts, to whatever extent that’s possible in November of an NHL season. And that’s where you can understand some latent dissatisfaction despite the adequacy of their record so far.

The Carolina game was the apex of their power play struggles, which haven’t silenced critics who pointed to its Edmonton disappearance last spring. And despite a Roope Hintz power play goal off the rush in Tampa, the Stars have gone just 5-for-36 (or 14%) on the job since potting three power play goals in Boston over a month ago. That’s why Dallas is 25th in the NHL in power play conversion (which is still better than the Edmonton Oilers, somehow, but who even knows what’s going on there).

What also doesn’t show up there are the three* shorthanded goals they’ve allowed in that same 12-game span. So it’s not just about the percentage of power plays converted, but the outright harm they’ve suffered as a direct result of its ineptitude. The power play is creating chances right now, but it’s not converting them, and that’s the only thing that’s going to make people feel better about it any time soon. (Fun fact: Dallas is 3rd-best in the league at scoring chances created per minute on the power play, per Natural Stat Trick. Converting those chances is a whole ‘nother ball game, but there is reason to hope for positive regression.)

*That number could be four, if you want to count the second Carolina goal from the other night

The penalty kill has also slid down to 9th in the league, which is still fine, but the trend is worrisome. After allowing just two power play goals in their first nine games, Dallas have given up eight power play goals in their last 11. In other words, they started out as a top-10 team on the PK, but they’ve turned into a bottom-10 team more recently.

And yet, Dallas has gone 6-4-0 in their last ten games. How have they done that? Well, by being a really good team at 5-on-5, if you can believe it. In fact, the Stars’ shooting percentage at evens is top-10 in the NHL, while their 5v5 save percentage is 11th-best. That’s not world-beating, but it’s also a great combination, particularly when any other configuration of manpower seems to work against you.

Jake Oettinger and Casey DeSmith have been good to great, with both goaltenders saving more goals than average. Oettinger in particular is a huge difference-maker compared to last year, when he started out the season quite rough before rounding into better form down the stretch. This year, Oettinger has looked (and performed) like a number one goalie, and that’s all a team with Dallas’s offense should need to be a serious threat to any other group in the NHL.

The underlying numbers are solid, too. Dallas creates more chances than average (+6% more than the average NHL team, as you can see below), and that’s why they’re scoring the 7th-most goals in the NHL despite the power play choosing to sleep in far too often.

And the defense has been typically stingy as well, allowing 9% fewer expected goals than the average NHL team does (that’s the “-9%” in the chart below). Combined with their goaltending, that’s why Dallas is allowing the 4th-fewest goals per game in the NHL, which is very good actually!

As for the specific players, we’ve talked about them plenty. You know that the Marchment-Duchene-Seguin line is among the best in the league, both in underlying numbers and actual performance, I’m sure. But do you also know that Thomas Harley is a +13 at 5v5, and Miro Heiskanen is a +9 at the same, even if they’ve not been the ones scoring most of the time (until lately)?

Or do you know that Evgenii Dadonov has been on the ice for 9 goals scored and only 2 against in over 250 minutes of 5v5 ice time? Or that Nils Lundkvist is actually taking a big step forward this year, despite his recent injury?

We all know which players are struggling, or at least you do if you’ve been reading Stars Thoughts for the last month or so. But there are a lot of reasons to think that the team is doing all right, even as they have some obvious problems to fix. That’s not a flashy consolation or a damning indictment, but I don’t think we need to dig much deeper to understand what’s been going on this season, so far.

The Stars have gotten help from their depth with players like Sam Steel, Ilya Lyubushkin, and even Oskar Bäck playing much better than anyone (including me) would have predicted before opening night. And they’ve been absolutely carried by the feel-good story of Seguin, Duchene, and Marchment once again proving that really good players can sometimes be the best line in the league for dozens of games at a stretch, even if they aren’t the ones you expected.

Mavrik Bourque, Jason Robertson, and Wyatt Johnston wouldn’t have been anyone’s list of players you’d expect to have struggled so far this year, but then, all three of them also dealt with ill-timed injuries at the beginning of the year, too. That’s not an excuse, but I do think it’s a reason for very cautious optimism, if you’re inclined to look for it. Great young players tend to revert to type, and it continues to seem far more likely that they’re looking unlike themselves because their bodies have been literally unlike their normal, healthy bodies. Maybe that’s led to other struggles as they attempted to compensate for that, and maybe they’ve just found themselves a bit at sea because of the bumpy start to the year.

Maybe they won’t figure it out all year long. Maybe the power play won’t ever click, despite recent history showing it usually does figure it out, and certainly if they spend all year looking this bad at 5-on-4 when they should be at their best, major changes will certainly happen. But for now, I see a lot of things going all right, and a few things at either end of the extremes. But given that those have all sorted themselves out into a record where the Stars have won twice as often as they’ve lost, I think complaining is probably a waste of energy right now.

Celebrating would also be foolish, of course. There is much still to be proven, and the schedule is not going to become easier as the year goes on. Adversity will hit every team eventually, and repeatedly. And how these Stars will be judged was always going to be about what happens when the weather is getting warmer, rather than when the chill is setting in. So for now, drink another cup of coffee, and be thankful you’re not preparing for winter in Chicago. I hear it’s pretty bitterly cold up there this time of year.

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Note: writing is going to be a bit sparse for the next couple of days, so please bear with me until the end of the week with whatever shows up, in whatever depth. Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.