Charting Time on Ice – January

Overall, January was a pretty down month for the Stars. As a result of injuries and inconsistent play, they ended up going 4-6-1 this month and now find themselves sitting in the 10th spot in the Western Conference, 3 points out of the playoffs.

Dallas had a stretch of games in which they were without both of their top centers, Mike Ribeiro and Jamie Benn, and it really showed in how the team played. Offense struggled mightily and the team just couldn’t find any kind of consistency in their play.

The way Dallas played was eerily similar to what happened to the team last season around this time (massive injuries and dropping in the standings) so hopefully Dallas can get back on track after the All-Star break.

Dallas played in 11 games in January. Two of these games went into overtime. Kari Lehtonen started nine of games while Richard Bachman started the other two. For the month of January, the team’s PP went 2 of 29 (7%) while the PK went 29 of 34 (85%).

For the PP and SH stat boxes, I first put the amount of time that they had in the month and the total time that the player has on the season in parentheses. 

As a small comparison, the league leader among forwards in ice time this season is Devils forward Ilya Kovalchuk with 24:48 of TOI/G. He has 1066:36 total time on ice on the season. For defensemen, the league leader is Rangers defenseman Dan Girardi with 27:22 of TOI/G and a total of 1286:37 total ice time on the season.

more after the jump

GP = Games Played            TOI = Time on ice          TOI/G = Time on ice per game

PP TOI = Power-play time on ice              SH TOI = Shorthanded time on ice

Forwards (Ordered by TOI/G in January):

Player    GP   TOI TOI (Season) TOI/G (January)  TOI/G (December) PP TOI (season) SH TOI (season)
Jamie Benn 6 124:53 783:04 20:49 17:51 20:05 (114:02) 0:36 (33:18)
Loui Eriksson 11 227:57 928:45 20:43 18:46 29:14 (127:49) 15:49 (80:41)
Mike Ribeiro 4 77:32 798:07 19:23 19:54 4:05 (120:55) 3:11 (31:22)
Brenden Morrow 10 188:12 737:14 18:49 17:54 23:56 (116:59) 2:48 (20:52)
Steve Ott 11 193:45 777:04 17:37 18:21 17:02 (104:41) 15:19 (66:55)
Michael Ryder 11 191:12 803:27 17:23 16:01 20:59 (128:48) 0:11 (1:03)
Vernon Fiddler 11 168:44 668:27 15:20 14:11 1:59 (8:11) 20:52 (102:54)
Tom Wandell 11 158:22 430:24 14:24 8:16 16:59 (17:26) 0:56 (7:12)
Radek Dvorak 11 155:36 682:37 14:09 14:41 0:55 (5:46) 19:49 (91:52)
Erik Nystrom 11 153:59 570:04 14:00 14:07 3:35 (7:44) 10:50 (52:02)
Adam Burish 11 137:56 399:32 12:32 9:26 4:38 (20:11) 14:32 (42:35)
Jake Dowell 9 72:58 287:16 8:06 7:04   0:00 (1:02) 1:26 (22:23)
Tomas Vincour 4 32:23 193:03 8:06 10:48 0:00 (16:06) 0:03 (0:14)
Toby Peterson 7 40:06 239:21 5:44 7:38 0:34 (22:24) 1:09 (9:55)
Francis Wathier 1 5:25 5:25 5:25
Matt Fraser 1 3:57 3:57 3:57
  • While he only played in six games, Benn was getting a ton of ice time, raising his monthly average by three minutes. He was starting to double shift with fourth liners in order to get him some more ice time. Benn played in three games in which Ribeiro was injured. Benn’s ice times in those games: 20:23, 24:57 (in OT and his most ice time on the season) and 20:58. That was the first time this season in which Benn had three consecutive games with more than 20 minutes of ice time.
  • With the injuries to Ribeiro and Benn, the lines had to mixed up. Wandell found himself as the top line center alongside Loui Eriksson and Michael Ryder. Steve Ott was moved into the center spot for the second line and played most of his time with Morrow and Burish/Dvorak. The third line of Fiddler-Nystrom-Dvorak was broken up (with Burish taking Dvorak’s spot) for a while before being reunited in the latter games of January. Everyone else just became experiments on the fourth line just to see what worked.
  • Steve Ott has slowly been getting decreased minutes. For the first two months of the season, he was getting 19:09 minutes of ice time. It dropped to 18:21 TOI/G in December and now 17:37 TOI/G in January.
  • Michael Ryder’s 17:23 average TOI was the highest monthly average of the season, but his two goals were his lowest for any month. The loss of both Ribeiro and Benn hurt him the most out of anyone.
  • Vernon Fiddler also had a high mark for the year with his 15:20 TOI/G for January. It also ended up with him having his worst statistical month of the year. He only had one assist and one goal along with a -5 rating.
  • Tom Wandell was the big winner in the “Who the hell are we going to play as number one center!!??” sweepstakes and saw a huge bump in minutes as Benn and Ribs were out. January was the first time all season that he was averaging over 10 minutes a game. He also saw a ton of PP time too, but just wasn’t able to produce very much. He had only five points (1 goal, 4 assists) in January and none of those were on the man-advantage.
  • Another guy who pumped out his worst month of the season was Radek Dvorak. He only had two points (two assists) and was a -7 in January.
  • Shockingly, Adam Burish had no penalty minutes in January.
  • Vincour suffered a knee injury back in December and missed the first seven games of the month. He didn’t register any points in January.
  • Glen Gulutzan finally stopped using Toby Peterson on the power-play with the big guys hurt. He just wasn’t getting it done with the man-advantage, but Wandell didn’t do much better either.
  • With all the injuries and the flu bug going through the team, Matt Fraser and Francis Wathier had emergency spot duty on the team. Neither guy did much and both were immediately sent back down to the AHL.

Defensemen (Ordered by TOI/G)

Player GP  TOI TOI (Season) TOI/G (January) TOI/G (December) PP TOI (season) SH TOI (season)
Alex Goligoski    11 254:52 831:33 23:10 23:34 34:05 (131:04) 8:59 (37:08)
Trevor Daley 11 249:19 997:08 22:40 22:38 25:13 (121:32) 20:23 (116:03)
Stephane Robidas 10 212:12 937:08 21:13 21:49 22:31 (113:36) 23:06 (120:57)
Philip Larsen 2 39:54 364:17 19:57 16:59 0:00 (26:37) 1:48 (11:59)
Nick Grossman 11 218:12 867:41 19:50 18:33 1:00 (4:07) 21:10 (107:42)
Sheldon Souray 8 145:47 859:40 18:13 20:31 11:36 (103:40) 12:59 (90:42)
Mark Fistric 9 138:52 569:41 15:26 16:20 0:10 (0:49) 17:21 (71:10)
Adam Pardy 4 57:55 358:32 14:29 15:25 1:16 (2:01) 2:49 (19:22)
Jordie Benn 2 24:36 24:36 12:18 0:09 (0:09) 0:00 (0:00)
  • Daley had a very disappointing January after he had such a productive December (3 goals and 6 assists). In January, he only had two assists and they came during the first three games of the month. 
  • Larsen missed most of this month because of concussion symptoms. He scored the first goal of his career in his first game back.
  • Sheldon Souray missed a few games due to an ankle injury. 
  • Jordie Benn got a callup and made his NHL debut this month. He looked pretty good in his limited time and had an assist in his first game.
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