At the Halfway Mark, How Do the Dallas Stars Compare To Last Season?
Comparing 2022-23 to 2023-24 at the 41 game mark
With their loss to the Nashville Predators last Friday, the Dallas Stars officially passed the halfway point of the season, so let’s look at how this year’s team stacks up to last year’s team after 41 games.
Expectations coming into this season were undoubtedly higher than they were going into the 2022-23 season. Last year, according to The Athletic, the Stars were projected to finish thirteenth in the league and fourth in the division with about 97 points. Instead, they finished eighth in the league and second in their division with 108 points on the backs of fantastic seasons from the 2017 draft class, then made a run to a Western Conference Finals showdown against the eventual champions that could have gone either way until it didn’t [footage not found]. This year’s projection at the Athletic reflected last year’s success, projecting them to finish fourth in the league and first in their division with about 105 points and the second-best odds of winning the Stanley Cup.
Through 41 games this season, the top-line numbers look remarkably similar to last year. The Stars’ record at their halfway point last season was 24-11-6, on pace for 108 points, and are seventh in the league and second in the division in points percentage. This season, they’re 24-12-5, on pace for 106 points, and are seventh in the league and third in the division in points percentage. They’ve beaten Chicago since, to bring their pace up to about 107 points.
So, not much has changed on the surface. But Stars fans who remember the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons (or, of course, the Blues in 2018-19 for the opposite scenario) know that a team’s record halfway through the season is no guarantee of what it will be at the end. And it’s fair to say, given the tendencies to slow starts and late collapses and the top line’s struggles so far, that this team has not felt as dominant as they should be or possibly even as dominant as last year’s team. But is that the case? Let’s dig in!
Note: All stats in this article are as of January 8, 2023 for the 2022-23 season, the date of the Stars’ 41st game that season, and January 12, 2024 for the 2023-24 season, the date of the Stars’ 41st game this season. All data via Evolving-Hockey, NaturalStatTrick, and MoreHockeyStats.
5 on 5
As mentioned previously, this year’s Stars seem to have suffered from late collapses and especially slow starts more than last year’s team. As a result, they often seem to be playing from behind. A quick look at the numbers bears most of this out: they’ve spent 878:11 leading this year and 813:42 trailing compared to 942:09 leading and just 646:14 trailing last year.1 That’s a massive swing of roughly 4 hours less net time spent leading instead of trailing, or about 6 fewer minutes per game. So how do they have such a similar record to last year? Well, they’ve come from behind a lot more than they did last year. They’re on pace for 24 come-from-behind wins this season, 10 more than they had in 2022-23. As for late collapses, they’re actually on pace for two fewer losses when leading, but they’re also playing with a lead much less than last year (14 this year versus 16 last year).2
All of this is to say, clearly, the score effects this season are going to be different than they were last year. The Stars are in a position of needing to push for the next goal much more often this year. To make the comparison as apples-to-apples as possible, I’m using score and venue-adjusted 5-on-5 numbers throughout this section.3 I also included the rest of the teams in the league to provide some context for how Dallas stack up.
Even despite the score effects, this year’s Stars are better across the board in shot metrics. Their actual goal share has dropped, which we’ll get into later, but this year’s team does appear to have a stronger skater group than last year’s, as expected. Also of note, the league-wide distribution in shot share is slightly smaller this year than at the same point last year and looks mostly driven by fewer outright terrible teams, meaning fewer weak teams for the Stars to beat up on. By expected goals, the Stars are 5th best in the league compared to being borderline top 10 last year. In all, this paints a picture of a team that controls play at a higher level this year than last.
They’re doing it through both improved offense and, to a greater extent, improved defense. On offense, at 5-on-5, the Stars have improved their shot attempt rates, though their actual shots on goal have decreased. Their expected goals for rate has also decreased, which, taken with their increased attempt rates, means their average quality of chances has decreased. However, their finishing ability has improved: they’ve gone from a below-expected finishing team to an above-expected finishing team. That may regress closer towards average, but this is certainly a more talented forward group than last season.
Defensively, the team has seen improvements in almost every metric. By expected goals against, they’re the very best in the league this year. However, in an inverse of their finishing, their goaltending has gone from allowing fewer goals than expected to allowing more, leaving them middle of the pack and slightly worse than average in actual goals against.
Overall, at 5-on-5 the Stars boast a stronger skater group this year than last year at the same point in their season. The source of the team’s struggles playing from behind and giving up late leads appears to be a goaltending issue more than a skater issue.
Special Teams
Although most of the game is played at 5-on-5, special teams are also a major part of a team’s strength with a disproportionate number of goals scored on special teams compared to the amount of time spent on special teams. My methodology for special teams is slightly different from 5-on-5. First, I ignore shot share. Since special teams are so overwhelmingly dominated by one side, until teams start playing much more aggressively shorthanded, it doesn’t make sense to look at shorthanded offense because the sample size is so small. Second, I am using unadjusted rates. Although using adjusted rates at 5-on-5 is more predictive than using unadjusted rates, I am unaware of any research that shows the same to be true for special teams and I have not looked into it myself. Furthermore, expected goals already tend to be less accurate on special teams than at 5-on-5, and I don’t want to include an adjustment unless I am certain that it is improving the meaningfulness of the metric.
Power Play
The Stars’ power play is particularly interesting for several reasons. First, the top unit has been remarkably consistent across the last two seasons, due mainly to both their health and effectiveness. Second, despite that history of success they certainly struggled at the start of this season. Given that the entire top line plays on the top unit, it’s worth asking how much of that struggle is related to the top line’s struggles. Finally, the second unit should have seen an influx of talent with the additions of Matt Duchene and Thomas Harley and a bounce-back year from Tyler Seguin.
In this analysis, I look at the Stars’ power play as a whole compared to the rest of the league, as well as splitting out the first unit, which I’ve defined as Jamie Benn, Roope Hintz, Joe Pavelski, and Jason Robertson, plus any other skater, and the second unit, which I’ve defined as any unit with none of those four players on the ice. Those two splits (all four on, all four off) make up by far the most time of any distinct groups of skaters across both seasons.
The top unit last season was absolutely dominant. Compared to every other team’s overall power play, they paced the league in every metric (I haven’t looked at them compared to other top units, but I would be shocked if they were not near the top) and were a large part of the Stars’ power play last year being one of the best in the league. Not surprisingly to anyone who’s watched them, they’re down a lot this year, though they would still lead the league in actual goal rate. The second unit, meanwhile is also down across every metric, except actual goals where they are up and nearly league average.
It is not surprising then that the top unit has seen a smaller share of ice time compared to last season. Not only that, but the Stars overall have had more difficulty getting on the power play this season than last. Although the power play is still above average, both units have struggled compared to last season, suggesting this is a coaching/systems issue, rather than a personnel issue.
Penalty Kill
Compared to the power player, the penalty kill, on the other hand, has been lauded this year for its effectiveness, picking up right where it left off last year.
Oh, that doesn’t look very much like picking up where it left off. The Stars’ PK has gone from being near the top of the league for allowing the fewest attempts against (though being a bit higher on expected goals) to roughly middle of the pack by most metrics. Instead, it has been their goaltending keeping their opponent’s conversion rate low, allowing goals at roughly the same rate, despite facing more pucks. One silver lining to this though, is the Stars are spending less time on the penalty kill than last year, despite all the extended 5-on-3s so far.
Goaltending
This probably deserves a deeper dive on its own, but as alluded to above, goaltending seems to be the biggest issue facing the team this season compared to last. Similar to special teams, I am using unadjusted rates at both 5-on-5 and on the PK. My reasoning for this is that while score and venue may affect the rates at which teams take and give up shots, there shouldn’t be a reason for it to affect the rate at which a goaltender makes saves.
At 5-on-5, both Oettinger and Wedgewood are allowing expected goals to be converted to actual goals at a much greater than league-average rate. In fact, by this metric at 5-on-5, Oettinger has been one of the worst goalies in the league this year with every goalie worse than him seeing significantly fewer fenwick attempts against. Wedgewood has also given up quite a bit more than expected, though he has fared slightly better than Oettinger.
On the PK, both goalies have been fantastic. As mentioned before, goaltending is the story of the PK’s success. Although the overall league has shifted to allowing fewer goals than expected on the PK, Wedgewood has kept pace with the shifting environment to stay just above average. By raw conversion rate, Oettinger has maintained his efficiency down a man, though given the shifting environment this represents a less dominant performance than last year. Still, both goaltenders have been stellar.
I’m not really a fan of NaturalStatTrick’s high/medium/low danger numbers, because I dislike the way they take a continuous value (expected goals) and force it into bins. However, it is still useful for identifying trends. Digging a bit deeper into 5-on-5 save percentage numbers, a trend does emerge. Namely, both goalies, but especially Oettinger, have seen significant declines in their performance against high and medium-danger shots. Oettinger once against grades out near the worst in the league by these metrics, though Wedgewood is not far behind him for high-danger shots.
There could be many reasons for this. The Stars’ defense at 5-on-5 may give up chances that are much more dangerous than public expected goals models account for, making their goalies look worse than they are by those metrics. Oettinger may have been attempting to play through an injury even before he missed time this season that was affecting his performance. Wedgewood started 11 games in a row after Oettinger went out and fatigue almost certainly started to affect his play. This could also be random variance, given goaltending is already highly variable year-to-year, and high and medium-danger shots have a much smaller sample size than overall shots against.
Finally, Oettinger might just not be an elite goaltender. It’s worth remembering that before his breakout performance against the Flames in the 2022 playoffs, he had essentially been league-average. Over the last three seasons, he’s, again, right around league average. This season has been his worst and there’s no reason to think this is the real him. His performance should regress toward his true talent level, but it’s worth keeping in mind that his true talent may not be the level he showed last season.
Conclusion
The Stars are a very good hockey team, better than last season by many measures. On the surface, they appear headed towards a very similar regular season finish as they had in the 2022-23 season. At 5-on-5, they have improved offensively and defensively, although some regression may be coming for their finishing. Defensively, they’re among the very best in the league but are being let down by their goaltending, although some regression may also be coming for that. On both sides of special teams, the Stars are closer to the middle-of-the-pack than they were last season, though their penalty kill is being buoyed by outstanding goaltending. Overall though, despite the nitpicks, the Stars have one of the most complete teams in the league this season and a legitimate chance at a Stanley Cup this year.
Data via NaturalStatTrick.
Data via MoreHockeyStats.
Adjusted numbers are essentially an attempt to convert the numbers to a neutral scoring and venue environment.