What is Going On With Jason Robertson?

A conversation with my pal Bob Sturm about the Stars forward.

Every so often I do side-by-side pieces with my pal Bob Sturm, who runs the highly-successful Sturm Stack.

Bob had me on (if that’s the right term) to chat about Jason Robertson and where things are going with his season and long-term role. As we always do, this piece is published both here and Bob’s place.

Bob: What is going on with Jason Robertson?

Most Stars fans would be pretty shocked to know that “Robo” has had a season in his career that produced more points than any single year of Mike Modano. But, it happened just two seasons back when Robertson scored 109 points in the 2022-23 season.

We thought that meant that the 23-year old was destined to be a superstar moving forward. Unfortunately, the spring of 2023 produced a very quiet playoffs and then it was followed up in 2024 with an equally quiet playoffs.

And now, at age 25, he doesn’t seem terribly close to that 2023 form. What gives?

It has been a season to forget so far for Jason Robertson and with the latest Tyler Seguin news, that he will miss the rest of the regular season with hip surgery, Dallas needs Robertson to get back to his old form quickly. But, we are concerned about what we are seeing. So, I thought this is a great opportunity to bring Sean Shapiro back in and talk some Robertson with him.

That dream season of 22-23 produced an average game scoring line of: 0.56 goals per game with 0.77 assists per game and 1.33 points per game. That was 7th in the entire league and as we said, the best since the Stars moved to Dallas.

This year? Well, we sit at 0.2 goals per game and 0.4 assists for a 0.6 points per game haul. We aren’t even close. Less than half of the production remains from a guy who should be ascending. Was 2023 a fluke year? Honestly, he had years on either side of it that told us that he is probably a “point per game” guy which is still very rare. Last year Robertson was still 35th in points per game in the league and you can work with that. But, this year he is currently sitting 169th in the league in points per game. That is terrifying, given the contract he is on.

Of course, because we are always talking hockey behind the scenes, I wanted to talk with Sean Shapiro of ShapShots and SturmStack to pick his brain. And he, of course, delivered!

Sean: To me, it was pretty indicative that the rest of the hockey world is noticing this when Robertson wasn’t named to Team USA for the 4 Nation’s Face-Off in February, the first “best-on-best” international hockey tournament we’ve had since 2016.

Robertson had been a permanent fixture on projected lists after that 109-point season, he represented the next young American top-scoring winger, and whenever Team USA would be assembled, he would certainly be on it.

Instead, on Wednesday, Robertson was passed over for Team USA by the likes of Matt Boldy and Vincent Trocheck.

So is Robertson’s 109-point season the outlier or a realistic norm he can work back toward? Anecdotally, I think triple-digits aren't possible, analytically, I reached out to my good friend Prashanth Iyer – one of the best hockey analysts I know – to discuss this topic with him as well.