Friday, March 29, 2024 Mar 29, 2024
60° F Dallas, TX
Advertisement
Hockey

The Stars’ Top Line Is Still Unstoppable

But there are a few obstacles on the road ahead.
By |
Image
Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz, and Joe Pavelski are putting up numbers that rival the greatest lines in Stars history. Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

In Dallas, the gold standard of top-line brilliance will always be Mike Modano with Jere Lehtinen and Brett Hull. Sure, Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin with Jason Spezza were good, but they were more of a panic button than three players with meaningful chemistry. Hardcore fans will go to bat for the skill and violent will of Brenden Morrow with Lehtinen and Mike Ribiero. But the line with the Cup is what matters most. Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson, and Joe Pavelski don’t have a championship to their name, but they are better than the Modano-Lehtinen-Hull group in one key way: productivity. Combined, the Modano line paced for 222 points in the 1998-99 Stanley Cup year. Hintz’s line is on pace for 288. 

And all three players are doing their fair share. Robertson only has two less goals than Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid for calendar year 2022 with 55. In that same span, Pavelski has scored more points than fellow overachieving veterans Alex Ovechkin and John Tavares, while Hintz has more points than peers like Robert Thomas and Jack Hughes (Hintz with 88, Pavelski with 87). As a group, they’ve been on ice for 29 goals through 34 games, nine more than the second-closest line. That puts them on pace for 69 goals, a number that almost sounds modest until you consider that only one trio of players was on ice for more goals since 2007: last year’s Calgary line of Johnny Gaudreau-Elias Lindholm-Matthew Tkachuk. The Stars’ linemates are so spectacular that you’d think someone would have given them a quality nickname by now. (Yes, this bothers me, but I stand by my entries into this game more than something as milquetoast as the “Avengers Line.” If push comes to shove, I’m also fine if they don’t have one.) 

The question isn’t whether they can dominate but the degree to which they’ll continue to do so. Is their success sustainable? Will they slow down? One way to answer these questions is to take this full circle and compare them to the ultimate measure of success: top lines that won it all.

Below I’ll be looking at two things in contrasting the Hintz line with Cup-winning lines (plus one exception): goals per 60 minutes and expected goal differential. Why those two? Because the first principle for any top line is to impact the game, and nothing impacts the game more than scoring. A top line’s control of the shot quality (xGF percentage) adds that extra layer, loosely showing us how well it plays both sides of the puck by the overall shot quality it controls. 

As you can see, the Hintz line measures up with the best of them. And then some. 

Image

The best lines average 4.16 goals per 60. The Stars trio averages almost five. It’s obviously important for the top lines to score goals, even if there’s some minor variance. However, there’s almost no variance when it comes to controlling shot quality. The best lines dominate expected goal share, averaging nearly 60 percent. So there it is: the Stars line is performing exactly like all of the best lines in recent history. Or, I should say, exactly like all the lines that made history. 

Exercise over, right? Not quite. I don’t need to tell you that Dallas loses a lot of offense without these three on the ice. But you might be surprised to learn that Dallas loses some defense without them, too. 

Image

When the top trio is on the ice, the Stars allow 2.25 expected goals against, which makes Dallas a top 10 defensive team per the Evolving-Hockey model. Without them, that share of shot quality goes up to 2.63 expected goals against, which ranks 23rd, right between the flawed Oilers and the burning dumpster that is the Flyers. As a nice cherry on top, they’re also good worker bees in the defensive zone. In my manual tracking of individual zone exits, the trio averages a 55 percent success rate breaking out of their own zone.

I mentioned qualifiers because what’s clear is that Hintz, Robertson, and Pavelski will continue to dominate. What’s not clear is whether they can adapt. What do I mean? The Bruins are a good case study. They’re practically unbeatable right now with an absurd .839 win percentage, and it has happened by splitting up Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, and David Pastrnak. Instead of keeping the super trio together, Boston has opted to have Bergeron anchor a line with Marchand and Jake DeBrusk while Pastrnak has become the wingman for David Krejci and Pavel Zacha. 

This is about more than just teams experimenting with new combos. It’s also about the inevitable challenge of a long season. Recall that when the Lightning won their second Cup, Brayden Point was centering Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat. Injuries rewired the lines, and new chemistries were born with Steven Stamkos buffering a rejuvenated second line next to Anthony Cirelli and Alex Killorn. When Colorado won last year, its most frequently used line wasn’t Nathan MacKinnon with Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen, but MacKinnon with Landeskog and Valeri Nichushkin. The foundation of great performances is as much about adaptability as talent. 

Hintz, Robertson, and Pavelski have played together for well over a calendar year, which makes this area a bit of a black box. But Pete DeBoer might have to open it before the season’s out because Dallas struggles without them on the ice together. The other forward lines present a minefield of concerns. Only one line is above 50 percent in terms of shot quality differential, and that’s the Benn line featuring Wyatt Johnston and Ty Dellandrea, who have since been split up. Why was that, you might be wondering? Because it allowed the most expected goals against per 60 of any trio on the team. Meanwhile, DeBoer’s efforts to find someone who can help Seguin push the pace and control territory have proven fruitless. (Where Seguin once had enough speed to shorten the neutral zone, this year he’s entering the opponent’s zone with a 48 percent success rate, which is second-worst among Dallas forwards.) Again, production and performance are not synonymous. While this doesn’t count as a problem with the top line, it is a problem the top line can potentially help solve. 

I’m not here to argue about splitting up the top line, as I have in the past. That’s the implication, but it’s not the point. Johnston, for example, is young, but he’s also trending up. Dellandrea has slowed down, but his game is consistent. Even Riley Tufte has made a solid early impression. It’s possible these young players elevate others around them in spite of their inexperience. It’s possible there’s a combination to be found that doesn’t disrupt what Hintz’s line has built. There’s still more than half a season to go, after all. 

But every game that passes without a solution might take us one game closer to the day when Hintz, Robertson, and Pavelski get split up–and, in so doing, answer these production questions by default. If that helps Dallas win, so be it. And it better. Because it should take something special to even think about breaking up a line this spectacular. That might be the only way for opponents to stop the Stars.  

Author

David Castillo

David Castillo

View Profile
David Castillo covers the Stars for StrongSide. He has written for SB Nation and Wrong Side of the Red Line,…

Related Articles

Image
Hockey

Presidents’ Trophy?! The Stars Don’t Need No Stinking Presidents’ Trophy!

We called up some NHL scouts to ask about regular-season hardware and what worries them about the Stars in the playoffs.
Image
Hockey

The Stars Prepare to Ride Their Defense Into the Playoffs

Chris Tanev and Thomas Harley have risen to the occasion.
Image
Uncategorized

Don’t Read Too Much Into the Stars’ Loss to the Panthers

We love storylines, but this was about something far simpler.
Advertisement