What do Dustin Byfuglien and Jamie Oleksiak have in common? To avoid crude answers, I’ll just tell you: four goals. Oleksiak is tied for 34th in goals among defensemen in the NHL and currently leads all Dallas Stars defensemen. He’s only played in 17 games. The lowest total of games played of any of the defensemen ahead of him is 29. Since this is about to be an exercise in math that doesn’t make any sense, we may as well double his games played to put him in line with everyone else and say that if he had played a full schedule Oleksiak would have about eight goals at his current pace.
Eight goals would place him alongside top-notch defensemen like Aaron Ekblad, Erik Karlsson, Alex Pietrangelo, and Kevin Shattenkirk. Some of his goals have been ridiculously high in skill. Oleksiak has been able to make some of these splashy plays that the best of the best tend to make, showing tantalizing skills that make you think and hope that he’s turning a corner.
The prototypical NHL defenseman is a giant, hits people hard, skates like the wind, can score, and plays defense at a high level. When any defenseman seemingly checks several of those boxes, they’re going to get many chances to impress, and any apparent improvement is going to get people going. Oleksiak is checking boxes this year and the goal total definitely makes you think things are going in the right direction.
In a perfect world, production will look sustainable, underlying numbers will be going in the right direction, and a player will pass the eye test for an observer to have a reasonable level of confidence about an opinion on a player. I don’t think the eye test has been perfect for Oleksiak this year, but he has made the optics look better. The other two areas are what should give people pause about where his season is heading.
Theoretically, the best goal scorer in the world would generate a significant number of shots and score on a high percentage of those. To score, a player needs to be able to get shots, and to score a lot they need to be able to finish those shots. Goal scoring isn’t rocket science. If we just look at this group of 43, the ones with four or more goals, let’s see how Oleksiak stacks up.
In shots per 60 minutes of ice time Oleksiak is 42nd out of this group nestled safely between Brandon Manning and Nick Holden. Holden is probably a name to keep in mind. Oleksiak leads this group in one key stat: shooting percentage. He’s currently shooting a ridiculous 23%, a three percentage point bump over our new friend Holden. The top five defensive scorers in the league are shooting roughly half of that.
So we’re left with the dilemma of remembering how pretty some of Oleksiak’s goals have been, but staring the uncomfortable reality in the face that the actual goal scoring totals are juiced by a little bit of good fortune. We could reconcile this by suggesting he’s picking his spots and taking good shots, but we’d expect expected goals to account for this. It doesn’t. Offensively he hasn’t been any better than Esa Lindell or Stephen Johns.
Eight games into his season, Oleksiak was shooting 40 percent. The drop in production has started to hit a little bit, but he has earned a lot of praise for an improved defensive effort. This was never going to be a player who competed with John Klingberg for offensive supremacy of the Stars blueline. Any offense that he generates will just be icing on the cake if he can consistently produce a quality defensive effort.
With Julius Honka temporarily banished to the AHL and Patrik Nemeth seemingly no longer allowed on the ice, Oleksiak is the least effective defensively of the Stars regular defensemen. His 2.88 expected goals against per 60 minutes of even strength ice time is the highest total on the roster, nearly a full goal worse than Johns.
As much as fans want to beat up on Klingberg defensively, by virtually every measure he’s been more effective defensively on top of being the superior offensive player.
Anyone that tells you the eye test isn’t important is trying to sell you snake oil of the highest order. It is important, and particularly important when people with vast amounts of experience in the sport and with evaluating players say a player is passing the eye test. With that being said it’s very concerning that Oleksiak is producing offense at an unsustainable level without any underlying numbers to back him up.
The Stars need defensemen to step up and claim jobs for the long term. At times Oleksiak has appeared like he is doing just that, but unless those underlying numbers catch up with him the fall from grace is probably going to be ugly.
