Roope Hintz scored his 16th goal of the season when the Dallas Stars beat the Buffalo Sabres 4-2 on New Years Eve.
It closed out a nice December for Hintz, who scored seven times in 14 games, and through 35 games the Finnish forward is on pace for 37 goals, which would tie his career-best set during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons.
That’s great, Hintz is getting to the front of the net more and he’s finding success from the center of the ice. Here’s his shot chart this season, courtesy of InStat.
The other notable thing about Hintz, however, is while goals are happening at an ideal rate, he’s producing assists a career-low pace.
At his current rate, Hintz is on pace for 14 assists this season, a drastic drop after dishing out 35, 38, and 35 in the past three seasons.
There are a couple key factors at play here, some fairly obvious:
- Joe Pavelski (ding) isn’t here anymore.
- Jason Robertson hasn’t been scoring, which directly impacts Hintz’ assist totals.
Even with those obvious marks, it’s kind of inexcusable that Hintz has just two assists in his past 29 games.
Stars head coach Pete DeBoer was asked bout Hintz’ lack of assists on Thursday morning.
“Well his linemates have to score a little more,” DeBoer said. “I don’t think he’s playing any different than he has, and when you say he’s on pace for a career-high in goals, I think about the breakaways he’s missed, he should have 20 goals already easily. We should be talking about 50 with the chances he’s got. I’m not worried about the assists, I honestly think he’s playing really well … the assists, the answer to that would be power play and line mates sticking some pucks in the net.”
There’s a couple things I take from that answer.
First, DeBoer naturally views Hintz as more of a goal scorer than a creator. It was also notable to me that there’s higher expectation for goals, even though Hintz is leading the team in the category.
Second, the power play isn’t really a great excuse. Hintz has historically picked up roughly a third of his assist on the power play and this season he has exactly a third of his helpers (two) with the man advantage.
And when the Stars coach brings up the power play, he’s also bringing up something that falls more on the coaching staff than Hintz. I’ve written about this before, at multiple publications, but Hintz needs to be re-deployed on the power play.
As a flanker and shooter, Hintz isn’t really that effective. He’s got a decent shot, but not a scary one that teams have to respect. Hintz’ most effective power play usage is coming down the wing as a shooter, and with NHL teams moving to more passive penalty killing formations, those routes are frequently closed.
Hintz should be in the front of the net or in the middle of the power play formation, commonly known as the bumper. When you think about that shot chart earlier, it’s where Hintz does some of his best work, and while he drifts there from time-to-time on the power play, particularly on broken plays, he gets rigidly stuck on the flank way too often.
Getting back to even strength it’s become evident that there are too many times Hintz loses the puck. Giveaways aren’t the greatest stat, you have to have the puck a lot to have giveaways, but it’s notable that after having 37 giveaways in 80 games season, Hintz is already at 40 in 35 this season.
Hintz has been more of a solution than a problem for Dallas this season, that’s important to remember. But it is notable how his game has changed slightly, and tends to give further proof of how valuable Pavelski was to that line with Robertson in the past.
This is a point of observation right now, not an excuse. For the Stars and Hintz, it’s pretty vital that it doesn’t become a talking point or excuse in the second half of the season.
