Sean – 3 subtle reasons for the shift you describe above:

1) In the first half of the season, Harley wasn’t paired with Miro, and had lower level D matchups. He had less work defending and was able to join the rush and focus on his offense. When Miro got hurt – Harley stepped up and played big minutes and proved he was a top pairing D. So upon Miro’s return, the coaches rewarded him with more minutes and tougher matchups when he got paired with Miro. So playing against other teams’ top lines means more time defending and less time for offense. Especially in the playoffs when the coaches preached “defense”. The season prior he was a 0.5 PPG in the playoffs when he had less demanding matchups. Defending McDavid, Mckinnon and Eichel means different priorities and his advanced stats in those instances still reveal a high end D-man! Great +/- in the playoffs, but just less points.

2) Deboer changed up the offensive system through the end of the season and especially the playoffs. Early on last season, Harley and Miro were encouraged to break out and carry the puck up the ice themselves, which enabled them to activate into the rush offense. This generates more chances in the slot since they are leading the rush, or are close by as an activating 4th option. In the playoffs especially – Deboer insisted the d-men immediately headman the puck from the d-zone for the home run passes up to stretched forwards, which has continued in the early part of this season. This has resulted in this clunky, and less clean mid ice play that the Stars are now playing. In this scenario, there is way less opportunity for the D to join the rush and as a result, Miro and Harley get way fewer slot chances. Castillo keeps pointing out the Stars are a bad rush offensive team – and that’s because the current system discourages the D men from being up in the rush to contribute.

3) Deboer has really begun to insist that he wants his D-men to shoot the puck at the net immediately upon receiving a low to high passing play to them at the blueline. He doesn’t want them walking the line or passing D to D. He believes an early shot catches the other team before they can get in the shooting lane, and before their D can retreat to the crease, therefore better opportunities for tips and rebounds for forwards. You can actually hear Deboer screaming for the D to shoot as soon as the pass arrives when you attend games. So you point out Harley is now a peripheral shooter – but that’s probably not by choice given his ability to walk the line and create offense while doing so. I’m pretty sure Miro and Harley would much rather use their high end skills to walk the line and/or go D to D to open up higher quality scoring chances for themselves – but the current system actively discourages that.

Hopefully this gives you some more info with which to evaluate players! Keep up the good work.