What Teams Have It Better than Dallas Right Now?

For a team sitting at 5-2-0, the Stars feel like they’re scuffling a bit. Probably because they are. They simply haven’t been as good as they know they should be, according to both their players and their coach, and that’s a testament to the high expectations around this team and the reality of their performance thus far.

So despite the record (fueled largely by Jake Oettinger’s roaring out of the gate with an elite vengeance), it’s been easy for folks to start gently ringing some alarm bells. Most notably right now, this is the team with a power play that looks as menacing as a sleepy armadillo, which is to say you’re really not in trouble unless you somehow get close enough to let the armadillo bite you, and that’s really on you, isn’t it?

This is also the team that had to take the still-winless San Jose Sharks to a shootout just to extract two points, and the same team that lost to the Buffalo Sabres and the Washington Capitals. The Stars are 24th in the NHL in xGF%, and it’s getting far enough into the season where you can’t entirely blame that on score effects from leading so often.

And that’s all despite facing just one serious contender thus far, in Edmonton, or two if you count whatever Nashville thinks they should be this year. And in that Edmonton game, they also had to get their bacon saved by their goaltender just to eke out a win.

Miro Heiskanen has yet to score in a season into which he brought Norris Trophy aspirations, and the defense partner who was going to keep him on his strong side has already missed a few games. Tyler Seguin has already missed time on the one consistent scoring line the Stars have, and Mavrik Bourque is apparently getting healthy-scratched in Boston tonight. Sufficed to say, things have not lived up to the most optimistic billing.

Of course, you can spin things the other way, too. One could easily say that this is also a team that’s so good that they’ve marched out to a 5-2-0 start in spite of their power play, offense, and killer instinct all still hung up in customs returning from Edmonton last spring. You could easily say that this is a team that can weather its flaws and injuries, and even negate them due to their increased depth and overall structure. If they’re playing so badly and still putting up a .700+ points percentage, then think how good they’ll be when they start playing actually well! Shoot, if this team ever gets going, they could find a way to bend space and time to earn three points from a game, I’ll bet. Everything is impossible until it happens!

Whichever side of that argument you lean towards, it’s certainly the case that Dallas isn’t satisfied. But it’s also the case that many teams in the NHL aren’t satisfied with their performance thus far, and that’s where I’d like to add some context today.

So, here’s the question: what team is having a clearly better start than Dallas this year, taking both underlying numbers, realistic expectations, and actual performance into account? Go ahead, what team springs to mind? Which team’s performance would you cut-and-paste with the Stars’, so far this year?

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Winnipeg and Minnesota are easy answers at first, given their lack of regulation losses. But then, Dallas has the same number of regulation wins as both of them, with four. And Minnesota’s run (in which they haven’t trailed) has been fueled by an absurdly high save percentage from Filip Gustavsson and a team-leading goals total from 37-year-old Mats Zuccarello. This team is also still in cap hell, thanks to the buyouts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, so their ability to withstand injuries to any of their best players (and Zuccarello’s health is certainly a big question) is questionable, at best. So they’ve gotten out to a great start, but they’re also relying on a razor-thin margin to do it, with their underlying numbers at even-strength being basically 50/50. Minnesota’s strong defensive struture suggests they could get great goaltending this year, but their offense is also fourth-worst in the NHL at 5v5 so far. Their power play is white-hot, but their penalty kill is bottom-ten. Think of them like a bizarro Lindy Ruff team: one number is really good, but the other number is always dragging it right back towards the center. Oh, and three of their four wins were against St. Louis and Columbus (twice), though a recent 5-1 drubbing of the reigning Cup winners suggests they’re not just a paper tiger.

All told, is anyone really betting on the Wild not to regress back to their home of the past few years, right on the playoff bubble? Until Brock Faber can catch his goaltender in goals scored, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Winnipeg, for their part, is a simpler equation, because they’re similar to Dallas in terms of a negative underlying xG differential. The Jets are shooting 14.5% in all situations, which is the equivalent of turning your entire team into Nikita Kucherov when they release the puck. They’re also getting lights-out, .950 goaltending from Connor Hellebuyck, which is absurd even for him. History suggests he’ll regress to around .920, assuming another year of wear on the tires doesn’t start to show. He’s played five of six games so far, which would be even higher than his 60-game pace from prior seasons. Their power play, by the way, is also cooking to the tune of (checks notes) 44%, so I’m going to hazard a guess that this roster isn’t going to keep putting up 4 goals a night once that comes back down to earth. Also, I am going to say that Colin Miller and Adam Lowry probably are not 65-point players over the course of a season. Bold predictions, folks.

Oh, and the Jets have also played exactly one (1) playoff team from last year so far. Maybe Hellebuyck can lead them to another year of staying on Dallas’s heels, but this is also the Winnipeg team that got drummed 4-1 by the Avalanche last spring—the same Avs team Dallas beat in six. They did put up a great regular season last year, but history tells us this team struggles the most when the stakes get highest. Let’s see how they do in another ten games before the anointing starts in earnest.

The New York Rangers, you say? Well, they’re enmired in an argument with their goalie that looks destined to end with them handing Igor Shesterkin $12 million for the bulk of his thirties. Maybe that’ll work out great, just like a similar deal did for Montreal and Carey Price. But as for this year, the Rangers’ hot start looks more “real” than Dallas’s in most every regard: their power play is great, but that’s consistent with recent history for them, too. Their 5-on-5 play is solid underneath the surface, unlike last season, and…well, okay, that’s probably somewhat related to them facing Utah, Detroit, Detroit again, Montreal, and Pittsburgh. They have beaten one playoff team, in Toronto, but then again, Toronto has its own issues right now.

Still, you can only beat the teams you face, and New York has done that. Artemi Panarin looks like a Hart Trophy Candidate again, and despite Panarin, Chris Kreider, and Reilly Smith all being 33 years old, they look every bit like a President’s Trophy team ready to lose in the Conference Finals again. This team has the demonstrated ability to be great, and they are doing it again. What could go wrong? Probably nothing, Rangers fans. I wouldn’t worry about your goaltender’s happiness, or the ages of your veteran players. Everyone will be productive and healthy all year, and you’ll win the President’s Trophy again if nothing major goes wrong! What could go wrong, really? Let’s all ask that question, loudly, repeatedly.

The Calgary Flames came into the year looking like a team on the cusp of a rebuild, but somehow they have started out undefeated in regulation, though they actually have fewer regulation wins than Dallas, with just three. Their special teams have been merely average, but thanks to already having 12 different goal-scorers, their committee approach has been a unanimous success, with defenseman Rasmus “thank goodness John Klingberg isn’t around to scare me any more” Andersson leading the way. But the real reason for Calgary’s hot start is that they magically improved their goaltending by getting rid of Jacob Markström and replacing him with a 50/50 tandem of Dustin Wolf, who at 23 years old is going to be NHL ready whether he likes it or not, and Daniel Vladař, who is somehow 2-0 despite an .898 save percentage.

Given how bad this team was last year, Dustin Wolf needs to play like a pack of goaltenders (wolf joke) shoved into a single body for the team’s middling special teams and middling 5v5 numbers to continue supporting this pace. Then again, they do play in the Pacific Division, so expect them to fight with Edmonton until the last day of the season for the second wild card spot. It’s weird out there, trust me.

Let’s stay in Canada (just for this article don’t worry, not for real). Edmonton and Toronto are both teams that can crank up a terrifying offense and put up blistering pressure at 5-on-5, but both started the season with power plays nearly as bad as Dallas’s, while Edmonton continues to have the worst penalty kill in the league. The Oilers are 30th in the NHL in team saver percentage in all situations at around .850, which is the equivalent of their goalies magically turning opposing shooters into Nikita Kucherov The Winnipeg Jets every time they release the puck, and that’s a scary thing no matter who your top line is. Last year, it was a bit lazy to say the Oilers were just Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, but this year, that’s just factual. Nobody else is scoring, and they’d take almost anybody else in goal. But they’re in the Pacific, so they’ll probably get to the Conference Final as long as they don’t miss the playoffs altogether. And what are the odds of that happening, ha ha ha ha

The Leafs’ starting/only goalie has already reminded his team that they’re one injury away from asking a 30-year-old San Diego Gulls veteran to copy everything he saw Sergei Bobrovsky do last year. They’re also a team known for being flat-track bullies, and for taking nights off at the worst possible time. Unrelated: they got stomped by the Columbus Blue Jackets 6-2 the other night, and blanked 1-0 by Montreal in their first game of the season. Don’t worry, Leafs fans, I’m sure this team will show up when it matters most.

Colorado’s issues are well-documented. They’re getting massive production from their best players, which is to say that MacKinnon and Makar are piling up assists while neither play has passed Joel Kiviranta in goals, yet. Their penalty kill would be the worst in the league if not for the Oilers’, and the last save they got was when the NHL situation room gladly redeemed an ‘IOU‘ against Mason Marchment in game six. Alex Georgiev has one win in five starts, and he’s rocking an .810 save percentage, so things are great in the Rockies right now.

Carolina hasn’t played much this year, but they’re 20th in goal-scoring, which will probably improve (while also annoying all their fans in the process) thanks to their systematic approach of quantity over quality. I’m sure this is the year Frederik Andersen stays healthy, though, so there’s probably nothing to worry about. I’m sure they can get past the second round this year after renting Jake Guentzel last year wasn’t enough to do it. Cheer up though, Canes fans. If those underlying numbers stay positive enough to get them through the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Hurricanes might be lucky enough to get swept in the Conference Finals for their fourth time in four tries! That gotta be a record of some kind.

The Florida Panthers just won the Stanley Cup, and you’ll be hearing all about them when the teams are in Finland next week (or at least I will, since I’ll be there with them). In a way, every team would want to trade places with Florida right now, because almost anything can happen this season and it doesn’t matter. A Stanley Cup Ring in the ol’ ear holes will drown out a lot of negativity, I’m told.

But as Sergei Bobrovsky progresses through his late-thirties, how likely is he to continue his career’s resurrection? True, Sams Reinhart and Bennett have rocketed out to their Cup-winning form this year, but team isn’t stopping the puck like usual, which is how they’ve lost to Buffalo, Vancouver, and Ottawa so far this year. Maybe it’s just a Cup hangover, but the Panthers aren’t lighting the world on fire, which is how they sit with a worse record than the Dallas Stars through seven games.

As for the other decent-ish teams, who is really playing better than Dallas in a way that looks remotely sustainable? Tampa Bay looked like a team aging out of its competitive window even before they signed a 30-year-old Jake Guentzel for big money, and Andrei Vasilevskiy is at .878 through five games this year. Can he really keep up a five-outta-six workload all year, given his recent health record? If it doesn’t even amount to stopping 90% of the pucks he sees, I’m not sure it would be worth it even if the answer’s “yes.”

New Jersey finally has a goalie, so maybe they can be something. More specifically, they have two goalies who are, and I am not making this up, 34 and 35 years old, so that “something” might be “an even older version of the Kari Lehtonen/Antti Niemi duo.” It’s an apt comparison, given how they’re scoring as much as any team in the league right now. They’ve beaten Washington and Buffalo (twice!), so they’ve already shown they can do things the Stars can’t. Of course, this is the same team that cratered last year, and they’ve only got five regulation wins in nine games so far. They’ve scored 32 goals, but allowed 28. Are we sure Lindy Ruff is in Buffalo now?

The Boston Bruins have their own bit of drama, and the team is 29th in xGF% so far this year. They’re giving up 3.5 goals per game, which is why they sit at exactly .500 so far. And anyone familiar with Jim Montgomery knows exactly how well he deals with a team that isn’t defending well. Thankfully, they just got over a very public spat with their now-franchise goaltender, who also hasn’t proven he can even be a true 1A,

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Look, the point isn’t to throw cold water on every team’s success by pointing out that no team is perfect. Wait, yes, actually that is the point. No team is perfect, although the Rangers really are making a convincing argument.

That doesn’t mean Dallas can be complacent though, and to Peter DeBoer’s credit, he hasn’t been. Despite a 5-2-0 start, the Stars are already talking about urgency and desperation. The team has already changed up their power play units and forward lines in order to get the offense going, and who knows how long Jim Nill will be able to resist mashing the giant “LIAN BICHSEL” button on the dashboard. (Probably a few months more.)

To be honest, if you have to be good in only a couple of areas while your team lurches out to an uneven start, goaltending (the highest-leverage position) and the penalty kill (very high-leverage) are pretty darn good ones to choose, hence the Stars’ already having piled up 10 points. And given the Stars’ forward talent and history of power play success (aside from one series), one would think the power play has to figure it out before too much longer. So even when/if Oettinger comes back down to merely Excellent instead of Otherworldly levels of play, the Stars seem as likely as any team to be able to compensate for that in other areas, given their top-ten metrics in both offensive and defensive departments since DeBoer arrived in Dallas.

Things can always go wrong, of course. Teams unravel, players lose confidence, and organizations get tired of waiting for promises to become reality. But Jim Nill is as patient as they come, and the Stars have a pretty good list of reasons for why that patience is justified while they continue to work to get things back to the level they’re accustomed to seeing from this team. And really, that’s not all that different from most good teams, at this time of year. Everyone is trying to straighten things out to start the year, and the Stars have some areas looking fantastic, and some other areas they’d rather no one look at to begin with.

The team is about to play Boston and Chicago before they leave the country for a pair of games against the reigning champions, so if you’re a pessimist right now, then great news: you could well be feeling validated for your concerns in ten days! Or the Stars will continue to look like an above-average team even when they’re not living up to their high expectations, and we’ll get to continue this frustrating conversation even longer. If that’s not a win-win, then I don’t know what is. Neither does San Jose.