This is the 2022-23 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Jason Robertson

Forty-one goals, fourteenth in the league, with the 18th-lowest top speed and the 12th-fewest sprints of the 365 forwards the tracking covers.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2019-20	DAL	3	0	1	1	0	0	0	0	0	4	0.0	12:19
2020-21	DAL	51	17	28	45	+13	16	1	0	3	127	13.4	16:53
2021-22	DAL	74	41	38	79	+16	22	13	0	11	220	18.6	18:07
2022-23 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	128	58	67	125	+29	38	14	0	14	351	16.5	17:29

This Season So Far

The 2022-23 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

41 goals and 38 assists in 74 games — 79 points, a plus-16 and 22 penalty minutes at 18:07 a night, the 77th percentile among forwards. Fourteenth in the league in goals, and he missed eight games.

Eleven of them won the game. Nobody in this book had more; Chris Kreider, Leon Draisaitl and Steven Stamkos matched it.

58.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,084 minutes — the 16th-highest of the 393 qualified forwards. His ice went 68-44 against an expectation of 59.54-42.27.

Seven playoff games against Calgary for a goal and three assists as Dallas lost in overtime of the seventh.

The Finesse Game

Forty-one goals on 220 shots is 18.6 per cent, the 21st-highest conversion rate of the 393 qualified forwards. That is a real edge and it is also the number most likely to move: shooting percentage is the least repeatable thing a forward does.

9.85 shots per 60 is the 87th percentile and the volume is what carries it. 56 per cent come from the slot and the median travels 23 feet — he is inside, not outside, and the shot chart says so before the finishing does.

3.05 even-strength points per 60 is the 24th-highest of 393. Fifty-eight of his seventy-nine points came at even strength. He is not a power-play creation — 27 per cent of his points came on the man advantage, which is the 74th percentile and thoroughly ordinary.

2.15 takeaways per 60 is the 82nd percentile against 2.24 giveaways at the 85th. He handles the puck constantly and the ledger is roughly even.

The Physical Game

6-3 and 204, and the skating file is the surprise of the chapter.

21.4 mph is the 18th-lowest top speed of the 365 forwards the tracking covers, and 1.03 bursts over 20 mph per 60 is the 12th-fewest. He crossed 20 mph about once every four games. 9.08 miles per 60 is the 42nd-lowest.

So the leading scorer on a playoff club, at 23, is among the twenty slowest and twenty least-covering forwards the league measures. That is not a flaw to be corrected; it is what he is. He arrives before the puck rather than after it, and the tracking has no column for that.

2.24 hits per 60 is the 25th percentile and 1.07 blocks the 19th. 0.31 penalties drawn per 60 is the 23rd-lowest of 393 — nobody fouls him, because nobody has to chase him down.

The Intangibles

Thirty-ninth overall in 2017, the second round, and 128 NHL games with 58 goals at 23.

His chance share does not need his linemates. Without Joe Pavelski he is at 56.9 over 338 attempts, without Roope Hintz 54.3 over 434, without Ryan Suter 55.2 over 1,183, without Miro Heiskanen 55.5 over 1,418, without Esa Lindell 60.2 over 1,520.

Now read it the other way. Pavelski without him falls to 48.9 and Hintz without him to 47.7. Both of those are small samples — 462 attempts and 370 — but they point the same direction, and the direction is that the line was his.

Dallas has an 81-point centre of 38 and a 37-year-old on the top pair. The 23-year-old is the club.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

drives-play· the shot clock turns his way while he is out there
58.5% of the expected goals at five-on-five with him on, 47.7% for his club in the minutes he sat: +10.8, 99th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats moderately (0.39) · 29% keep it
sheltered· is started in the attacking end
65% of his end-zone starts in the attacking end, 97th percentile among forwards
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.66) · 47% keep it
net-fronta strength· lives in the blue paint; the screens and the tips
“he is inside, not outside, and the shot chart says so before the finishing does”
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He arrives before the puck rather than after it, and the tracking has no column for that.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2021-22 · 1,084 minutes

Expected goals: 58.5%; 97th pct
Shot attempts: 55.6%; 90th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 68 for, 44 against. Expected: 59.5 and 42.3.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

78th

Numbers

97th

The two rank him within 19 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 649 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 67 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2021-22 · 74 games

Top speed: 21.4 mph; 22nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 0.31 a game
Distance: 2.74 miles a game
Hardest shot: 88.1 mph; 56th pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2021-22 · 1084 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2021-22

The club: DAL took 51.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 58.5% — 7.5 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,084 minutes at five-on-five — 74th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Joe Pavelski	58.8%	56.9%	48.9%
Roope Hintz	59.6%	54.3%	47.7%
Ryan Suter	62.6%	55.2%	46.0%

58.8% together, 56.9% for him apart and 48.9% for Pavelski apart. Pavelski was worse away from him while his own share held — the pairing was doing more for Pavelski than for him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

292 unblocked shots in 2021-22, 43 of them goals. His median goal came from 17 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.