How Wyatt Johnston can replace Joe Pavelski on the Stars power play

Replacing Joe Pavelski is one of the Dallas Stars’ biggest storylines this season.

While the veteran had started to falter and Father Time finally seemed to catch him, he was the calming voice in the Stars’ locker room. He was the figure that brought everything together and, frankly, helped usher in an era where the Stars reached the NHL’s final four in three of his five seasons with the team.

On the ice, the Stars’ power play will look significantly different for the first time in five years. While Pavelski bounced back and forth between the net front and bumper position on the power play, he was always a pillar that everything was built on.

In his five seasons with the Stars, playoffs and regular season combined, Pavelski scored 60 power-play goals. And they all came from exactly where you’d expect. Here’s the data courtesy of InStat.

Part of Pavelski’s success was dependent on tips and deflections, something he was probably better at than anyone else over the course of his NHL career. But an underrated part of Pavelski’s power-play presence was his ability to shift in and out of pockets, turning into a pop-up shooter who could finish.

Here are some examples from his final NHL season.

And maybe it’s lazy because I’m just following up on the great piece that Sam Nestler wrote about Wyatt Johnston on Wednesday, but this is an area where Johnston will have an opportunity to help ease Pavelski’s loss on the ice.

Johnston scored five power play goals between the playoffs and regular season during the 2023-24 campaign, here they are.

For a visual representation, here are the shot locations for each of those goals, again courtesy of InStat.

Johnston has never deferred to others—it’s one of the reasons he’s had NHL success right away—but he’s going to have an opportunity to be a more integral, designed part of the power play this season.

It’s something that NHL scouts I’ve spoken to are intrigued about, seeing how high of a ceiling Johnston really has. He’s already a bona fide NHLer, and he’s been getting better, but if Johnston is going to become more than a point-per-game player in the NHL, which some scouts believe, he’ll have to contribute more on the power play.

Another NHL scout also pointed out that Johnston’s growth with the man advantage could make the unit more dynamic, and I agree. When the Stars’ power play has struggled, it’s because it became too predictable, focusing too much on creating a downhill shot for Jason Robertson or looking for the tip from a point shot. When chaos reigns supreme and players are switching and rotating, that’s when the Stars are at their best.

And that’s the foundation of Johnston’s game. He gets to the right spots at the right time, reads the positioning of others better than any other forward on the Stars’ roster, and knows when and, more importantly, when not to take the space.

It’s easy to use goals, so when pulling clips, I often intentionally pull videos that didn’t end up as goals. So, going through some of Johnston’s power-play film from last season, here are a couple of examples of how the Stars’ power play can look and maintain pressure when he’s the chaotic focal point of the attack.