Stars need more from Robertson
Jason Robertson was the heartbeat of the Dallas Stars' offense during the regular season, but he's struggled to find a rhythm during the first four playoff games against Calgary.
Entering Wednesday night's Game 5, Robertson has one assist in four games. The four-game goal drought matches a season high for Robertson, who scored 41 goals during the regular season.
“It's playoffs,” Robertson said following the Stars' 4-1 loss in Game 4. “I knew it was going to be harder. I'm still trying to find spots and get shots. But I've got to do more for myself.”
The first-round, best-ofseven series between Dallas and Calgary is tied at 2 heading into a pivotal Game 5 on Wednesday. NHL teams that win Game 5 to take a 3-2 lead in a series have won the series 79.1 percent of the time.
This is Robertson's first postseason experience in the NHL. When he made his NHL debut in 2019-20, he did not appear in any of the Stars' postseason games during their bubble run to the 2020 Stanley Cup Final. Last year, when he was a rookie, the Stars missed the playoffs.
During Game 4, Stars coach Rick Bowness shuffled the lines in the third period, which included breaking up the top line of Robertson, Roope Hintz and Joe Pavelski. After the game, Bowness said the
Stars were “trying to free up Robo a little bit. He's struggling, there's no question.”
On Tuesday afternoon, before the team's flight to Calgary, Bowness said to expect that the top line will be broken up for Game 5.
The Stars have scored seven goals this series. Two have been empty-netters (Hintz and Michael Raffl). Two have been on the power play (Pavelski and Tyler Seguin). One was at 4 on 4 (Radek Faksa). The two 5 on 5 goals have both been scored by Pavelski.
“That's not going to win the series, simple as that,” Bowness said. “We need to get some balance, and we've been fighting with it all year. But now, when you're down to the nittygritty of the whole thing, it just raises the importance of getting more scoring.”
Robertson just finished one of the best campaigns in Stars history. He became
the fourth player since the franchise moved to Dallas to record 40 goals, joining Mike Modano, Seguin and Jamie Benn. He had 79 points in 74 games. He led the league with 11 gamewinning goals.
Without Robertson, the Stars would be waiting on the results of Tuesday's draft lottery.
Robertson has shown he is a difference-maker in the NHL. Does his performance this season give him confidence during this series?
“At this time of the year, it's pretty irrelevant, right?” Robertson said. “It's going to be a lot tighter and it's playoffs. All I can do now is re-watch what I did and have my teammates to help support me and the coaches to tell me what to do better.”
Pavelski has been through postseason slumps before. On Tuesday, he recalled an exit meeting after he had just one assist in a series that the Sharks lost. It stuck with him since “it's harder because your time could be cut short in a hurry.”
“You go through, for whatever reason, a slump or a matchup or a low-scoring series and you don't produce and you want to produce more,” Pavelski said. “So things get looked at certain ways. At the end of the day, you've got to work to get your opportunities and produce when you can. Ultimately, it comes down to wins, so you've got to help the team some way to come out on top that night.”
Robertson led the Stars with six shots on goal and 10 shot attempts in Game 4. For the series, he is tied for the team lead with 22 shot attempts and 12 shots on goal. According to Natural Stat Trick, his 1.42 expected goals are only behind Hintz (1.5) and Raffl (1.46), who have benefitted from empty-netters.
“They're playing everyone tight out there,” Robertson said. “I'm sure it's just their game plan. It's our game plan, too, to try and close down space. It is what it is.”
Robertson's only point of the series came on Pavelski's goal in Game 2.
“You have to help them through it,” Bowness said. “An older guy, you can challenge a lot harder through tone and words. When you're dealing with younger players and you can see that they're sensitive to the whole thing, you've just got to handle it a little differently.”