Two Particular Stats That Bode Well for the Dallas Stars

The vibes are good in Dallas right now. Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz are scoring, and the Stars have two power play goals in their last three games, which is a hot streak, by their standards.

Dallas also has the third-best goal-differential in the West, and their points percentage is good for third in the Central Division. And frankly, finishing anywhere in the top-three of the Central would probably be acceptable, given how little their top-seed status garnered them last year.

But it’s easy to point to a three-game winning streak against lower-tier competition and pretend that everything is all better now. It’s much harder to justify that feeling with cold, hard numbers. Or maybe it’s easier to justify, because of computers. But I am not here to judge the difficulty of making dogmatic statements, at least not on Fridays. Instead, let’s talk about two specific numbers that best support your current optimism* about the Dallas Stars, with 45 games left to play in the regular season.

*Or, if you refuse to be optimistic about this team, then here are two great targets for your next takedown. Be sure to label your social media post as a “EPIC ROAST” of what follows, because I hear that will really drive a lot of Viewer Engagement.

Stat #1: The Stars have the second-best penalty differential in the NHL

First off, let’s clarify something: the NHL stat page continues to be one of the least-helpful resources for hockey writers there is. This has been the case for over a decade now, and it never ceases to frustrate me. In this case, for instance, my frustration is with the fact that penalty-differential isn’t the same thing as power play differential. Ten-minute misconducts don’t result in power plays, but it seems clear that the NHL stats don’t account for this, or for matching penalties, and so forth. And power plays tend to matter a whole lot more than penalties as a whole, if we’re trying to describe what advantages or disadvantages a team actually encounters.

But after doing some quick calculations, it looks like their power-play differential of +21 isn’t too far from their penalty-differential of +23. And that lines up with what savvier mathematicians (read: actual ones) than I have worked out. Dallas tends to draw roughly one more power play than their opponent every other game.

That makes the power play struggles that much more frustrating, of course. If Dallas had just managed a league-average power play this season rather than falling into the bottom five, they would be sitting much more comfortably near the top of the Division rather than fighting with other Wild Card teams. But as Pete DeBoer said a couple of days ago, it really does seem like the power play scoring would fix a whole lot of issues at the same time. And while going 2-for-13 in their last three games is hardly a reason to hang a banner, it does alleviate a lot of frustration and help teams to stay dedicated to the process rather than being tempted to cheat for chances.

In fact, over Dallas’s last 11 games since Vegas scored two power play goals to edge the Stars, things have been overwhelmingly lopsided: 41 power plays drawn, and just 25 allowed. You’d think 16 extra power plays would be good for even more than a 7-3-1 record, but that’s also not too shabby, either.

The Stars’ penalty kill went 24-for-25 over those same last 11 games, which is outstanding. So as maddening as Dallas’s inability to capitalize on their solid process has been this year, the success feels much more latent than absent, through 37 games. They aren’t playing undisciplined hockey, or lazy hockey, or even listless hockey. They’ve done the work to force teams to take penalties. And if the recent uptick in scoring by Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz continues, there’s every reason to believe that hard work will become even more profitable in the second half of the year than it’s been through most of the first half.

Dallas is actually 9th in the NHL in shooting percentage at 5-on-5, which is great! But they’re 29th in power-play shooting percentage, when they have their (in theory) best shooters on the ice. The talent is there, and maybe more of it will come via Jim Nill’s usual magic. The sooner it appears, the more drastically good Dallas is going to look.

Stat #2: Dallas Is 3rd in the NHL in Shots-on-Goal Differential per Game

A quick word about this stat: Carolina is often in first, because of their unique approach to shots, which is to say they just fling pucks at the net from everywhere, trusting the old “accuracy by volume” approach. Often, it works! In the playoffs, they have struggled to climb the mountain, in part because of goaltending, and in part because of injuries, and in part because of whatever narrative you want to make up. Anyway, the point is, Carolina often looks good in this metric, but they’re a bit of an outlier, given how so very many of their shots are generated from the perimeter, rather than the slot.

So, the Hurricanes are first in this metric, generating over 7 more shots on goal than their opponents, on average. But in the group of more “normal” teams below them, here is the order: Edmonton, Dallas, New Jersey, Florida, Colorado, then Vegas. I mean, if you wanted to list some of the Very Real contenders this year, I think most of them would be found on that list. And Dallas is just a skosh behind Edmonton for second place.

And in Dallas’s case, it’s not because they’re just shooting the puck from everywhere. In fact, they’re one of the choosier teams in the league when it comes to expected goals, and that is pretty obviously related to the quality of their shots, as you can see from this heat map of their shot locations below:

They’re prioritizing the center of the ice, as you can see from all of the red-shaded areas. And as you can see from the swaths of blue on their defensive map, they’re strangling most of those same areas of the ice when it comes to the shots they allow, aside from a weirdly common spot almost exactly where Ridly Greig scored from last night, but probably it’s not going to become a trend, don’t worry about it:

All that to say, Dallas’s process this season has been extremely good, whether in terms of shot location (see above), shot quality (xG), or shot total (3rd-best in the league). That doesn’t mean the coaches have been flawless, and it certainly doesn’t mean the roster doesn’t need help (it does) or that all of the players who haven’t scored up to expectations will figure it out before the playoffs (they might not).

We haven’t talked about Jake Oettinger in this piece, but that’s because we don’t have to. He’s been very good this season, albeit not perfect, and if the Stars can find a way to keep him fresh for the playoffs, he’ll have every chance to silence his critics. But the very good news for Dallas is that, with the team and process they have in place even before upgrading at the trade deadline, this isn’t a team like Winnipeg or New York where the goalie has to be world class every night for them to have a genuine shot a run. Yes, this is basically just me telling you to be quiet about the Edmonton series, because the power play really did lose that one, full stop.

In summary, the more I look at what Dallas has done well this year, the harder it is for me to look past these two glaring facts: Dallas tends to out-chance their opponents in terms of pucks sent on net and in opportunities to do so with one more skater than the other team. Those are fantastic starting points for any team, let alone one with as much proven success as Dallas; now it’s time for them to start finishing again.