As training camp opened, this September, the Dallas Stars announced Jason Robertson would miss the majority of camp and the preseason after undergoing foot surgery to remove a cyst during the offseason. “Majority”, as it turned out, meant not joining practice until opening night was less than two weeks away and not partaking in a single preseason game. Not to worry, however! The last time Robertson sat out camp and preseason he set the Stars franchise record for points in a season with a 46 goal, 109 point campaign and finished fourth in Hart Trophy voting. Maybe getting a late start on the season would help him bounce back after a somewhat disappointing 2023-24 season.

Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case. As of today, Robertson has just 6 goals and 11 assists in 27 games, a 17 goal, 52 point pace that would be by far the lowest full-season point total of his career. A start to the season that has Sean Shapiro and Bob Sturm asking What Is Going On With Jason Robertson (paywalled)?

Shapiro and Sturm’s conversation is worth reading in full, but I’d boil their argument down to this: Robertson is a complimentary player, not a driver, who had an outlier season in 2022-23, is somewhat reliant on the power play, and might still be dealing with his surgery from the summer.

The power play is its own issue, so I’d like to dive into Robertson’s even strength play to answer the questions of how much Robertson struggling, what he’s struggling with, and why he might be struggling with a look towards whether he can turn things around the rest of the season.

All statistics are as of December 10.

Bob Sturm asserts that Jason Robertson is reliant on the power play and that he never bought Robertson’s position at the top of the league. I don’t think Sturm means that Robertson is not a first line player, but rather that he’s not an elite player. If that is the case, maybe Robertson’s struggles this season are tied to the power play, rather than even strength play, and the drop-off may not be as severe as it seems.

Looking into Robertson’s production for the past full five seasons, courtesy of Evolving-Hockey, doesn’t support that assertion though.

Prior to this season, Robertson’s production had always significantly outpaced his usage at even strength. While his ice time was in line with a first line/second line tweener, his even strength production had consistently been that of a top 25-30 forward, whether looking at points, on-ice expected goal differential, or either version of Evolving-Hockey’s Wins Above Replacement. In other words, by practically every metric, Robertson has produced like a top line player on a top 10 team, and often closer to top 5. Even his “step back” season last year still placed him just below his previous two seasons according to the underlying numbers.

This season however, Robertson’s production, both points and underlying numbers, are those of a second line player. Not only that, but for the first time in his career, his usage outpaces his production. Micah Blake McCurdy’s Synthetic goals is kinder to him, but still shows a significant drop from the last two seasons in Robertson’s ability this year, over half of which is due to his even strength play.

Chart via HockeyViz

So two things appear to be true: over the previous 3-4 seasons, Robertson has been at the edge of elite or better at even strength, but this year he’s nowhere near as effective as he has been historically.

So what is Robertson doing poorly this season compared to previous seasons? According to both Evolving-Hockey and HockeyViz, the 2023-24 season saw Robertson improve his defensive play enough to offset his less effective offensive play. This season, however, Robertson’s defensive metrics are more in line with his 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons, while his offensive numbers have continued to fall. In short, while he’s struggling on both offense and defense, the offensive side of his game appears to be the bigger issue.

This is supported by data from NHL EDGE. From 2021-22 to 2023-24, Robertson spent 42.5%, 42.7%, and 43.1% of his even strength ice time in the offensive zone. In 2024-25, Robertson’s offensive zone time is down to 40.4%. Furthermore, when combined with data from the Evolving-Hockey, Robertson’s zone time data shows that his in-zone defensive play is roughly the same as it had been in prior seasons (except for 2023-24), but the his offensive play has fallen off.

It’s worth noting for a moment, that Robertson’s on-ice offensive numbers are still strong enough to make up for his defensive zone numbers. Robertson has never been a strong in-zone defensive player, his best season he was average at suppressing expected goals. His defensive impact has been in his ability to get out of the zone and into the offensive end of the ice. This season, he hasn’t been able to do that as effectively, and as a result, he’s spending roughly equal time in the defensive zone which has translated into worse overall shot metrics.

Furthermore, Robertson individually isn’t playing as well in the offensive zone as he used to.

Throughout his career, Robertson has excelled at forcing the opposing goalie to make a save once he gets a shot past the defense. However, he’s also pretty consistently seen a higher number of his shots blocked than league average, likely a result of his skating ability allowing opposing defensemen to play him more closely. The net effect is that the percentage of his shot attempts that ended up on net has dropped every season. That’s actually in line with the overall NHL trend, as Prashanth Iyer has discovered, but that trend has been driven equally by missed shots and blocked shots. In Robertson’s case, his missed shot percentage is as low as it’s always been, but nearly 36% of his shot attempts are being blocked this season, compared to about 30% league-wide, the largest difference of his career.

Robertson’s shot attempts are less efficient because of shot blockers, but he’s also struggled with individual shot volume this season.

Robertson’s goals per expected goals are the lowest of his career, but he’s still a well above average finisher. That’s despite missing the net on more high danger chances that he has any other season of his career. The biggest issues for him at an individual level are that he’s not shooting nearly enough compared to previous seasons and that the shots he’s getting are also significantly less dangerous than previous seasons. A look at the locations of his shot attempts makes this trend even more obvious.

The first two seasons of his career, Robertson mostly lived at the net front. In 2022-23, he started taking more shots from all over the offensive zone, but still got to the front of the net with regularity. During the 2023-24 season Robertson’s shots started to drift away from the net front. This season he’s taken more of his shot attempts from his strong side faceoff circle than anywhere else on the ice, a much less dangerous area of the ice to shoot from.

Shapiro suggested Robertson is being fronted by opposing defenses. That’s almost certainly true based on his blocked shot rates, and shot maps over the past two seasons, but he was still an effective player last season, adapting defensively to make up for his decreased offensive opportunities. What has made this season such a tough one for him?

Shapiro and Sturm alluded to this near the end of their conversation, but to my mind, Robertson’s struggles are largely due do his offseason surgery. When the news broke that he would miss the majority of training camp, Jim Nill revealed that the surgery recovery meant six weeks of non-weight bearing activity, meaning he was just able to start putting weight on his ankle as training camp began. Even if his surgery is not causing pain anymore, it seems impossible that the loss of six weeks of training just before the season started wouldn’t have had an effect on his skating ability.

Returning to the NHL EDGE data, there’s clear evidence that due to his injury Robertson has not started the season fully prepared for NHL-level play. On a per-game basis, Robertson has seen a steady increase in his ability to burst as the season has progressed, suggesting to me that either his strength or his conditioning or both were not where they needed to be on opening night.

I tend to think of “bursts” as indicating acceleration, rather than raw speed. An NHL rink is fairly small and space is tight, so for a player to reach 18+ MPH requires either an opening in defensive coverage or the explosive ability to break free without space. Robertson has never been a quick skater; his previous three seasons he averaged between 9.5 and 10.5 18+ MPH bursts per 60 minutes, which was near the bottom of the league for forwards. This season, however, he is dead last among forwards with just 7.3 18+ MPH bursts per 60 minutes and has exceeded 20 MPH just twice in 27 games. It’s not particularly close either. The next closest forward, Patrick Maroon, averages 8.2 bursts per 60 minutes. Even for a player who’s had to overcome their skating their entire career, Robertson’s lack of footspeed this season seems like a clear case of his difficulty playing at his normal level.

Another potential factor in Robertson’s struggles are that Roope Hintz, by far his most common on-ice teammate, is also having a bit of a down season this year. Though he hasn’t experienced a drop-off to nearly the same degree as Robertson, per HockeyViz Hintz’s shift-to-shift impact has fallen from a clear first line player to a first/second line tweener.

Chart via HockeyViz

Furthermore, Wyatt Johnston and Miro Heiskanen, his next two most common teammates, have also had slow starts the season playing below the level previously expected of them. Individual single-number metrics can have a difficult time disentangling impacts for players who spend most of their time together, as Robertson and Hintz do, so the cause of Hintz’s (relative) struggles could be Robertson himself, but the fact that so many of the players he shares the ice with are having slow starts of their own should not be ignored when assessing Robertson’s play.

There is some cause for optimism for Robertson however. In the chart of his burst rate, there is a clear trend towards his burst rate for previous seasons. Starting around the 13 game mark, Robertson’s individual game burst rates are much closer to his previous season averages. Looking at Robertson’s burst rate together with his on-in xGF% suggests that he might be recovering already.

Note: for the chart below, xGF% and burst rate have been scaled so that 0 is the lowest value and 1 is the highest for each metric to make the comparison more clear.

Although the relationship isn’t exactly one-to-one, there is a fairly clear trend to both Robertson’s xGF% and burst rate improving as the season has progressed. Using the game 12 cutoff, in his first 12 games, Robertson had 5 games below 50% on-ice xGF% and 4 above 60%. In his next 15, he had 4 games below 50% and 7 above 60%, including his last 3. If the underlying numbers are improving, hopefully the results will follow soon.