By Sean Gentille, Dom Luszczyszyn and Shayna Goldman
We knew we were going to get at least one marquee series in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. You can’t have that many elite teams in the field without some of them bumping heads right off the bat. It’s simple math.
This matchup definitely qualifies. On one side, you’ve got the defending champs, about to start a high-stakes run at the Cup again. On the other is the West’s top regular-season team, with what might be the scariest top-to-bottom lineup in the league, trying to clear a path to the Stanley Cup Final. Stars-Golden Knights should be good — and it might be great.
The odds
When these two teams met last year, the series looked like it would be very tight, with Vegas narrowly edging out Dallas. The Golden Knights were at 53 percent, thanks in no small part to how strong they looked in the previous two rounds — momentum they carried into a 4-2 series victory.
This time around, the script has flipped. Dallas wins this series 62 percent of the time, and it’s worth noting that’s with a fully healthy Vegas lineup on the other side. The margin may be even wider if Mark Stone and/or Alex Pietrangelo aren’t ready to go for Game 1 or aren’t at 100 percent.
This matchup may still be close, as it goes six games or longer 61 percent of the time, but the overall lean is decidedly in the Stars’ favor. That’s the price to be paid for Vegas limping into the postseason: A date with the best of the West in which the Golden Knights start as underdogs.
The numbers
Dallas is one of the most well-rounded teams in the playoffs. A lot of that has to do with their five-on-five game. A 55 percent expected goals rate landed the Stars third in the league, which is thanks to their play on both ends.
The Stars are a solid offensive team with balance between their rush game and shots off the forecheck. With contributions up and down the line, Dallas ranked top 10 in expected and actual goals. Their biggest strength, though, is defense.
With just 2.26 expected goals against per 60, the Stars are one of the best teams at limiting quality chances against. Dallas doesn’t allow many rush chances against or high-danger passes, and does a great job protecting the middle of the ice. With Jake Oettinger hitting his stride, the Stars may finally have the reliable goaltending to back that up, too.
The Golden Knights are a good five-on-five team, but they don’t have the same consistency as Dallas. Vegas tends to give up more shots, but they keep them outside the net-front area and middle of the ice. A real strength is that they get out of their zone with control to lead the rush and counteract. That is going to be pivotal in this series to take some weight off their goaltenders.
Vegas can stack up relatively well at five-on-five. The question is how much better they can be with a fully healthy lineup. That hasn’t been the case post-deadline, so there is potential for that to improve — if they can cut through that Stars’ defense.
Where the Golden Knights fall short of Dallas offensively is on the power play. Vegas is pretty below-average, while the Stars thrive on the advantage. Dallas has the special-teams advantage on the penalty kill as well, which makes even-strength play all the more important for Vegas.
The big question
Can Dallas’ youth movement spark a different result from last year?
These aren’t the same teams that met last spring. Aside from new additions in Dallas — namely Matt Duchene and Chris Tanev — the biggest change for the Stars is the emergence of a burgeoning young core.
Wyatt Johnston, 21, and Thomas Harley, 22, suited up for the Stars last spring, but both have seriously leveled up in the year since. Add Logan Stankoven, 20, to that mix and the Stars have a young trio that can move the needle and is ready to make a big impact in these playoffs.
Last year, there weren’t a lot of expectations placed on either Johnston or Harley, both of whom were rookies getting their first taste of playoff hockey. Still, without much help around either, they were arguably asked to do more than they could handle.
They both had a Net Rating right around average, which spoke to how they didn’t make a huge difference in one way or the other. Johnston chipped in 41 points in his first year with some nondescript underlying numbers, while Harley only got into six regular-season games — though he crushed heavily sheltered minutes when he did play.
There’s nothing wrong with average, but that’s not quite what the Stars got in their series against the Golden Knights. Both struggled under the pressure. Harley did lead the team in expected goals at 61.6 percent, but being outscored 5-2 in sheltered minutes undid much of that goodwill. As for Johnston, he went without a point in six games, was outscored 5-0 and had a team-worst 33 percent of the expected goals. In other words, the duo looked their age.
That should change after spectacular breakthrough seasons for both players. Johnston jumped up a tier toward legit top-line-forward status. He scored 32 goals and 65 points (mostly at five-on-five), all while putting up some of the best two-way numbers on the team. Meanwhile, Harley immediately showed he was a top-pair-caliber defenseman with elite puck-moving and two-way play. He capably filled the void behind Miro Heiskanen that was left by John Klingberg’s decline and departure.
By Net Rating, Johnston finished the season at plus-12 while Harley ended up at plus-16 — both top-five marks on the Stars. Their projected values are a little more conservative, but in each case, they’ve cemented themselves as worthwhile top-of-the-lineup players. The Stars are projected to be 18 goals better than last year’s version simply off the improvement of Johnston and Harley.
And of course, there’s still Stankoven, coming in with an average impact as a rookie, just as Johnston and Harley did a year ago. The difference is that Dallas’ depth can insulate him more than it did for Johnston and Harley. Stankoven, who led the team in expected goals percentage and scored 14 points in 24 games, won’t be leaned on to make an impact the same way Johnston was in 2023. That could make all the difference in what he can do as a playoff first-timer.
That trio represents the future of Stars hockey, but they’re already good enough to be the difference in the present.
The X-factor
How healthy are the Golden Knights?
A truly timeless question, isn’t it? It applies today, it applied a month ago and it’ll probably apply in 2025. For the time being, we’re going to assume both Mark Stone and Alex Pietrangelo are fully locked and loaded. Vegas’ odds to win the series (38 percent) are based on them being healthy for Game 1 and whatever follows. All told, Stone adds four percent to their win probability, Pietrangelo three. If they miss time, or if they’re not at 100 percent, the arrow starts to tilt downward.
It’s fair to wonder just how ready either of them will be. Stone’s status has been discussed ad nauseam, and we know he can return mid-stream, but it’s worth reiterating that he hasn’t played since Feb. 20. At the time, he was leading Vegas in points (53 in 56 games) and primary assists (20), though his five-on-five impacts had gone from unbelievable to simply good.
Pietrangelo hasn’t played since April 2 due to illness. If it’s simple precaution, Vegas will be fine. It’s worth noting his Net Rating took a dip this season from plus-10 to plus-five, out of the No. 1 defenseman range, but Noah Hanifin and Shea Theodore make that less of an issue and Pietrangelo is a playoff horse, so the point may be moot.
The rosters
After spending more time together than any forward combo in the league last season, Dallas’ top line of Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz and Joe Pavelski dropped all the way to … fourth. No surprise there. When three players work together as well as they do, there’s no real need to deviate. It’s worth noting they were at least a bit less effective together in 2023-24 — their expected goal share dropped from 59.2 to 56.9 and their actual goal share from 68.1 to 55.6. The dynamic still works: Robertson is the shooter, Hintz is the puck-carrier (though he’s done a bit less of that this season vs. last) and Pavelski does the dirty work. We may never quite figure out which of the three is the true lead dog on that line, but Robertson, for a second straight season, made a strong case for himself — he led the Stars with a Net Rating of plus-17.5. That was a tick ahead of Hintz (plus-14.4) and a solid bit ahead of Pavelski (plus-9.3).
There might not be a greater testament to the Stars’ forward depth than the fact that Tyler Seguin — whose 1.33 goals/60 is second on the team and 56th in the league — grades out the worst, relative to his counterparts. Matt Duchene’s one-year, $3 million contract is one of the best values in the sport. Mason Marchment (15 goals, 2.1 points/60 at five-on-five) has now turned in two strong seasons after his breakout with Florida in 2021-22. The three of them make up one of the best second lines in the playoffs.
Where Dallas really starts to get scary, though, is on the third line, where Johnston spent his second full NHL season leveling up. Since the trade deadline, Johnston is 17th in the league in five-on-five points/60 (3.27) and tied for fifth in five-on-five goals (eight). Calling him a playoff breakout candidate would be doing a disservice to his play so far in 2023-24, so we’ll just say his 21st birthday in mid-May should be well-timed. Stankoven has cooled off a bit since an unreal start to his career, with six points in his last 18 games, but Jamie Benn has led the Stars in points (overall and per/60) since March 1. The fourth line, centered by Radek Faksa, provides strong defensive play and adequate offense.
On defense, we’ve discussed Harley and Chris Tanev in detail elsewhere, so we’ll use this space to say that while Heiskanen didn’t quite make a Norris Trophy push, he still turned in an all-around season worth of a high-end No. 1 defenseman, with a Net Rating of 16.1. That ranked 10th among defensemen and he would’ve been higher if he played a full season. Heiskanen has some help now, too, which is always nice. Maybe the best sign for Dallas these days is that Ryan Suter and Jani Hakanpaa are getting third-pair minutes. They can handle those.
In net, Oettinger may have struggled long enough to start raising some uncomfortable questions, but he’s been locked in since the deadline, putting up a .924 save percentage and saving more than five goals above expected. If that’s what Dallas gets from him in the postseason, look out.
There are spots in the Golden Knights’ lineup that are tough to figure out; a wait-and-see approach to the dynamic between players like Stone and Tomas Hertl might be best. We know Hertl should be one of the best second-line centers on earth, and we know Stone is an all-situations tank when he’s healthy. It’s time to see how they work out together.
That’s not the case for the top line of Jack Eichel between Ivan Barbashev and Jonathan Marchessault. If you want to know how they look, watch some highlights from the 2023 postseason. Marchessault just finished the most productive regular season of his career, leading Vegas in goals (42) and points (69). Vegas outscored opponents by 0.9 goals/60 while they were on the ice together, a better rate than Dallas’ with Robertson-Hintz-Pavelski.
Any line centered by William Karlsson will be fine. He’s one of the league’s elite shutdown centers, and he just turned in one of the best seasons of his career. A 60 percent goal share was his second highest with the Golden Knights, and 2.13 expected goals/against 60 was his best yet. All that, plus a bounce-back in goal scoring (30 this season, his most since 2017-18), is a big part of what makes the Golden Knights’ bottom six capable of running with the Stars.
We’ve talked about the first pair of Pietrangelo and Hanifin. Behind them are Shea Theodore and Brayden McNabb, who, thanks in part to Theodore’s huge offensive impact, are one of the best second pairs in the league. He’d be a No. 1 on plenty of other teams, with a Net Rating of plus-15 that puts him in the league’s top 15. From the perspective of his projected value, he lands as the 23rd-most valuable defenseman in the league. Alec Martinez and Zach Whitecloud on a third pair is true quality depth, along with Nicolas Hague as the next man up.
Who plays goal is anyone’s guess. Coach Bruce Cassidy on Thursday sounded like he was having a tough time making the decision himself. That’s understandable — Adin Hill (.908 save percentage) and Logan Thompson (.909) have had similar seasons. Thompson has been notably better since the deadline (.926 to .867); Hill was good enough last year to win the Stanley Cup. We’ll see if Cassidy’s gift for starting the right guy at the right time continues.
The key matchup
Chris Tanev vs. Noah Hanifin
In Calgary earlier this season, those two played more than 742 minutes together. After the Flames’ deadline sell-off, they’re now on opposite sides in one of the playoffs’ marquee first-round matchups. Both have been perfect fits for their new teams. Now, they’ll try to check another box.
Hanifin gives the Golden Knights a third fringe No. 1 defenseman; his do-everything skill set, now and in the future, will help lighten some of the load previously placed on Pietrangelo, who figures to be his long-term partner on the Golden Knights’ first pair. Since the deadline, Hanifin has put up an expected goals share of nearly 60, played big minutes, produced his share of power-play points and signed an eight-year megadeal. That’s why the Golden Knights went out and got him.
Tanev, meanwhile, has been exactly as advertised, giving Dallas an ideal right shot to play behind Heiskanen. In 19 games, he leads the Stars’ defense in expected goal share (about 61 percent) and expected goals against/60. That’s why the Stars went out and got him — to be a true “defensive defenseman” who positively impacts play through his ability to suppress the opponents’ chances. It’s worth noting that Heiskanen’s average Offensive Rating faced was plus-2.5 before Tanev was acquired and has since dropped to plus-1.7 — a big change that frees up his pair for a more offensive focus.
The bottom line
As our favorite colleague Pierre LeBrun likes to put it — this is big-boy hockey. There are so many fascinating series in the opening round and this one immediately shot toward the top of the list once it was locked in.
Dallas and Vegas are two heavyweight teams with serious championship aspirations and it wouldn’t be a shock to see either team go all the way when all is said and done. The unfortunate reality is that it means one will be sent packing early, and it may just be the team that won it all last spring.
References
How these projections work
Understanding projection uncertainty
Resources
Evolving Hockey
Natural Stat Trick
Hockey Reference
NHL
All Three Zones Tracking by Corey Sznajder
(Photo of Wyatt Johnston and Jack Eichel: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)