If you were asked to predict the tone of a Thomas Harley piece before the season started, it would probably be the opposite of the one being written today: praise and elation over the 47 points the Stars defender scored last year, and how it was carrying over. As opposed to the tone today, which is one of mystery. Where did the Harley from last season go, and who is the 23-year-old puck mover becoming?
Indeed, Harley was a storm last year. His 15 goals led all Stars defenders by a country mile. It was a brilliant regular season that was built off of his previous run with the Stars, when he was baptized in the 2023 playoffs. The hype was real when he scored nine points in 19 postseason games (which tied with Tyler Seguin), and then he took it to the next level. It was easy, then, to see why some fans felt as if Jim Nill’s bridge deal of two years and $4 million in annual average salary was something of a gamble. Harley was more of a known commodity than John Klingberg at the time of their contracts, but only one of them received the maximum term.
Did Nill sense something wrong, or believe he needed more evidence? No. Harley received a bridge deal because the Stars can’t give everyone the max term at the same time. If Nill didn’t believe in Harley, then $4 million wouldn’t represent the absolute floor on what he’ll be worth in the near future. Still, 16 games into the season, there’s no denying that Harley has struggled to stand out. With all of the new faces, the blueline has been a somewhat predictable work-in-progress.
Why does it feel as if Harley is just another cog? Is something wrong? What’s going on with the player who seems to have more offensive potential than the team’s perennial Norris candidate, Miro Heiskanen?
Absolutely nothing.
This goes beyond the usual caveat of things being too early to analyze. For one, an element of expectation bias is in play, in addition to what we believe modern defenders—which Harley embodies down to the elegant movement—should be. As the game has shifted to more transition play between multiple zones,” a false dichotomy is created between defensemen who score points and those who don’t. And that skews our expectations. Harley scored a lot of points last season at a very young age for a defenseman. If he’s not scoring as many points, does that mean less value?
No. In fact, there’s a strong mathematical argument for “who cares” when it comes to Harley’s production. In 2018, Travis Yost did research on blueline scoring, and how it affects teams. Naturally, the more a player shoots, the more points he accumulates. The plot twist is that having a point-producing defenseman doesn’t lead to more team scoring. This is because defenders are more likely to pick up secondary assists, which are often just white noise. This was true for Harley last season. Almost 40 percent of his production came in the form of secondary assists.
There’s obviously no stat to define a defender’s true value. But the cool thing about Harley being such a dynamic player is that with so many more elements to his game, we can assess them piece by piece. Below is a look at the ingredients of Harley’s impact on goals above average.
Here we see his impact on goals scored above average (blue), goals against (orange), power play (pink), penalty kill (powder blue), penalties taken (green), and penalties drawn (yellow); the latter two are important because the odds of a goal being scored goes up if someone takes a penalty. The results are unambiguous.
Harley is head and shoulders above his defensive partners in terms of impact on goal differential. Granted, most of his impact is coming from his ability to drive the offensive rate of play (he leads the blueline in shots on net per game). But he’s also remarkably disciplined, which I would argue is a lowkey defensive skill because it means you’re not taking shortcuts. And he’s above average on special teams. Harley’s only flaw is his defensive impact on goals, and his ability to draw penalties. All in all, not a bad combination.
If this data illustrates anything, it’s the adage about how “being good means being invisible.” That doesn’t make any sense because impact players should visibly make a difference, but as with Esa Lindell, who also rates highly on this scale, a defender’s shift-to-shift value isn’t always obvious. Perhaps this is why, whatever expectations are of who Harley should be, Pete DeBoer’s estimation is significantly higher, considering the defender is averaging 22 minutes a night. Not only is that a slight increase from last season, but it’s also second on the team behind Heiskanen.
It’s easy to see why the diminished expectations for Harley started before the season even began. The offense that Dallas was so lauded for flatlined in the playoffs. And Harley, whose goal-scoring was never going to sustain itself, became one among many reflections of the Stars’ postseason failures. Except like with this team’s early season stretch, Harley’s game, like Lindell’s, just became less loud. He was still putting in the playoff work to control territory, ranking eighth among postseason defenders in expected goal percentage. Harley may not be scoring goals at the absurd rate he was last year, but his job is to control all three zones with his gifted edgework, lateral movement, and playmaking. His job is to win the territorial battle, not do Jason Robertson’s job for him (a story for another time, perhaps).
However, respect for all the wrinkles and punctuation of Harley’s game should not be confused with accepting whatever he brings, whether great, good, modest, or bad. The Stars are on a quest for the Stanley Cup. That means Harley will have to bring the heat at crunch time. My argument is that he is already doing all the right things to be above criticism. For Cup aspirations, Harley has to make his own argument for the greatness he appears on the cusp of achieving. In that regard, we’re still waiting.
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