For some fans, this question is a waste of time. “Of course Matt Duchene is the best option for Tyler Seguin!”
After all, the Roope Hintz line is perfect. The Wyatt Johnston line is perfect. The fourth line is perfect for what it is. That leaves two top-six players in Seguin and Mason Marchment to find a top-six soulmate. Enter Duchene, a top-six player.
Pete DeBoer sounds like a guy who already has his mind made up. “He’s going to create some real mismatches,” noted DeBoer on Duchene after the first day of training camp. “I thought all three of those guys looked real good. Tyler Seguin has looked really good on the ice and in the scrimmages even prior to camp at the captain’s practices they were doing. [Marchment] looks like he’s back to where he was at the beginning of last year, both in his mental framework and his game. That has the potential to be a real good line.”
I’m not here to question DeBoer’s coaching, or his decision-making for that matter. Rather, I think it’s worthwhile to question his biases. Is Duchene the best option for Seguin because he’s the best option — or is he the best option because it’s convenient for him to be the best option? That might look like an insulting question, but not really. After all, if Duchene goes to any other line, he’ll create a domino effect for others, which begs the question: does the cost of disrupting old chemistries outweigh the benefit of creating new ones?
Early this month I wrote a lengthy video analysis of Marchment’s tale of two halves at the Stars Stack. There’s a lot to unpack and no easy answers. On the one hand, we have evidence of more good than bad: Marchment was great in Florida, and great in Dallas for half a season. On the other hand, that’s the only sample we have to work with, and the video didn’t exactly portray a hopeful argument. I do think Marchment’s production will get better. But will it be enough to offset his very real on-ice deficits? Beyond that, it’s worth asking what exactly Seguin and Marchment’s “chemistry” consists of.
This has always been my concern. They don’t interlink like top-six talents. Both are decent shooters, but outside of that, who are they? Strong forecheckers? Rush attackers? Two-way guys? The good news is that their history suggests some possible course-correction.
On the surface, the Seguin-Marchment duo looks unlucky rather than bad. Their share shot attempt and shot quality was above average. Their goals above expected being such a huge minus would imply that the goals will eventually come. It’s worth remembering that they never really had a consistent third man on their line, either. It feels like ages ago that Ty Dellandrea started on their line, with Denis Gurianov on the Johnston line. Once the Gurianov experiment ended, it was Radek Faksa’s turn. When the piece that had always alluded them finally showed up — Max Domi — Seguin and Marchment rotated injuries, alluding them even further.
However, Seguin and Marchment’s numbers never “regressed” in the playoffs. Instead, they got worse.
And yes, these numbers were mostly with Domi. While DeBoer sounds like he’s already made up his mind, it doesn’t necessarily mean the decision’s already been made. “We had some good chemistry with some of those combinations, so it doesn’t make sense to try to reinvent the wheel to start,” DeBoer affirmed last Friday. “But (emphasis mine) we’ve got seven exhibition games, everybody is going to get a chance to play with just about everyone as we go through. We start today at day one with that, but there will be opportunities for guys to move around and play with different partners on [defense] and upfront with different line combinations.”
Duchene makes plenty of sense. Unlike Domi, Duchene has profiled like a legit first line-player his entire career. Below is his synthetic goal rating.
I’ve done my best to explain synthetic goals already. They’re a little like Wins/Goals Above Replacement (WAR/GAR) insofar as “sG” is meant to be a single-value stat. However, rather than evaluate historical markers for a player’s impact like those stats, sG aims to calculate a player’s scheduled value using different data points for a net goal rating. I’m using sG in this case because I think a single-value stat is a good way to analyze a one-dimensional player like Duchene. The 32-year old was genetically engineered to attack off the rush, and create chances; not cycle endlessly and defend the neutral zone. Calling him one-dimensional might seem like an insult, but a player can be one-dimensional and still have value. Domi was a one-dimensional player too, but that deadline pickup was a win by any measure.
With all that said, Duchene’s last season dip is a little worrying, but he’s experienced dips like those before, as evidenced by his 2012-2013 and 2014-2015 seasons. As he gets older, we’d expect more of those, but Duchene is also coming to a much better team. So, he should bounce back, but to what degree?
First let’s talk about the line of Johnston centering Jamie Benn and Evgenii Dadonov. It’s a sacred cow, and I get that. They score more goals than they give up, tallying an absurd 58 percent goals-for percentage. However, goals-for percentage is just a glorified plus-minus. What about the rest?
The rest is less rosy. They’re a good shooting line but I wouldn’t call them much more than that.
Having done a deep dive into Johnston’s play, I came away thinking that Johnston will easily adapt to having more a shooter (Duchene) than a playmaker (Dadonov) next to him because the playmaking is there, just as it was in juniors. In general, Duchene is far and away the more dangerous player. That, I think, might be the most interesting question of all. What would it be worth for Dallas to have two potentially dominant lines instead of one dominant line, and three lines with varying degrees of descending value?
I don’t think there are easy answers here. After all, I’m assuming that Duchene with Benn and Johnston will be dominant. Maybe they aren’t. I’m assuming that Johnston leveling up won’t have a knock-on effect for Benn and Dadonov. Maybe it will. I’m also assuming that Marchment can’t rebound. That’s a lot of assumptions on my part.
Assumptions go both ways, though.
There’s a circular logic to line chemistry itself, wherein we only present evidence of line chemistry after the fact. Chances are, nobody had Dadonov on their line chemistry bingo card before he ever came to Dallas. What’s wrong with a brief experiment to learn about new ones? That assumes doing so will have a disastrous effect on everything else, which feels like a sillier assumption than suspecting that a lot of these aging players will struggle to take forward strides.
So why do I consider this such an important question to begin with? Is this a bigger deal than Dallas’ blueline issues? No. But I do think the Duchene with Seguin discussion is critical. Why? Because elevating Seguin’s game feels like buying new tires on a car. It’s a nice upgrade, but it doesn’t fundamentally change anything. However, if Benn-Johnston-Duchene showed chemistry and started to develop dominance, that reads more like tuning your engine.
Unlike the blueline, there’s no wrong way for Dallas to go about their groupings. But if what if there’s a right way to maximize Duchene? It’ll be hard to find out if they never ask.