Before the Stars signed Joe Pavelski to the three-year contract worth $7 million annually, coach Jim Montgomery dissected the film. Video coach Kelly Forbes assembled all 38 of Pavelski's goals into a package that Montgomery could sort through by strength and analyze.

The broad takeaway was simple: the Stars needed Pavelski's goal scoring, and the variety of ways he could do so. The other conclusions were more nuanced: how he positioned his body, how he drove the net, the surprising effectiveness of his one-timer and the particular areas of the game in which Pavelski's skills could help the Stars, who finished 29th in scoring last season.

Pavelski's 38-goal season in 2018-19 (with a 20.2 shooting percentage) was the fourth time in the last six seasons he scored at least 37 goals. Since he entered the league in 2006-07, only nine players have more goals scored than Pavelski. His laurels are impressive, but in what areas can he impact the Stars?

To figure it out, I followed Montgomery's lead in watching all of Pavelski's goals from last season and placed them in five categories: tips and redirections, rebounds and loose pucks, from the left circle, odd-man rushes, and other. Some goals could fit multiple categories (like tips from the left circle or rebounds on odd-man rushes) but I just placed them in the category most appropriate.

Tips and redirections (12)

This is where Pavelski did most of his damage, and it's a skill he's been known for across his 13-year NHL career, previously spent in San Jose. The Stars got a closer look at it when the Sharks visited Dallas last November, with Pavelski scoring a goal that impressed Montgomery initially, but stuck with him after re-watching it.

It was Pavelski's seventh goal of the season, and he scored it from one knee by deflecting a Brent Burns pass from the right point. He made Esa Lindell cover him on both posts and nearly drew a tripping penalty on Lindell.

"In the game, I was like 'Wow, what a skill,'" Montgomery said.

"But to actually watch it develop and how he did it. He spun off our best defender, Esa Lindell, and Esa had to chase him, he knew where he was going. Esa chased him and should have got a penalty on the play and he didn't. Joe still never took his eyes off the puck, had his stick on the ice and scored from his knee on a redirect. I think if you want to encapsulate one goal where it showed his dogged determination, his skill level and his details of his game, that's the one."

Pavelski's season is dotted with examples of these types of tips.

This is his 19th goal of the season, at Arizona on Dec. 8, when his one-legged tip leaves Adin Hill frozen in disbelief.

This is his 22nd goal of the season, against Winnipeg on Dec. 20, that clanked off his knee and had Connor Hellebuyck searching for answers.

This is his 32nd goal of the season, against Boston on Feb. 18, where he absorbs a cross check from Zdeno Chara but is still able to tip a puck over Tuukka Rask and a flailing Chara.

Pavelski's 34th goal of the season, the middle goal of a Feb. 24 hat trick at Detroit, is one that jumped out to Montgomery. Pavelski moves through the offensive zone, and eventually sets up at an extreme angle to the right of Jonathan Bernier. He receives a pass from Marc-Edouard Vlasic and tips it high, short-side from what was officially ruled as 17 feet away.

"You could tell by his reaction that it's something he's worked on probably for a month and has finally paid off in a game," Montgomery said.

"It was a very tough angle to do that deflection from, but you tell that it wasn't by fluke. It was something that he had worked on over and over again."

Pavelski's skill tipping pucks is undeniable, and his 54 tips and 21 deflections last season each ranked sixth in the NHL, according to Charting Hockey. But how much of his production had to do with the style of hockey the Sharks played?

Under Peter DeBoer, San Jose has had a very distinctive philosophy in the offensive zone: gather the puck, get it to the blue line, bomb away and look for tips and rebounds. Since DeBoer took over in 2015-16, only one Western Conference team (Chicago) has more shot attempts than San Jose at 5-on-5.

Last season, Sharks defensemen Brent Burns and Erik Karlsson were first and second among the league's defensemen (min. 500 minutes) in shot attempts per 60 minutes at 5-on-5. It was the sixth straight season Burns led the league's defensemen in that category.

By comparison, Taylor Fedun (20th), John Klingberg (52nd), Miro Heiskanen (60th) and Ben Lovejoy (62nd) were the only Stars defensemen in the top 100 last season, according to Natural Stat Trick.

In Montgomery's first season in Dallas, the Stars adopted an offensive philosophy that prioritized quality over quantity. They looked for pockets of ice in the slot rather than blasting away from the blue line (the Stars were top 10 in high-danger chances per 60 minutes and bottom 10 in shot attempts per 60 minutes, according to Natural Stat Trick).

Over the summer, Montgomery and his staff have analyzed how to optimize the Stars' offense. At their core, the Stars under Montgomery will always be a possession and pressure team, but they've dissected other teams in the league to glean ways to score.

He noted that Boston likes to hold pucks and spread the defense out. St. Louis likes to operate from behind the net. Tampa Bay generates a lot of offense off the rush and on the power play.

"We just want to figure out how we want to do it and we've got a real good handle on it after analyzing the top five scoring teams from o-zone play, not just [total] goals," Montgomery said. "What we do as a team, that's a big focus of our staff's is improving our o-zone goal production, and [Pavelski] and Corey Perry and us having a little bit more structure in what we're going to be doing, in how we're going to be doing it, and all five guys being able to play faster because of it, I think is going to allow us to be able to score a lot more goals."

So how does that relate to Pavelski? The Stars may not be firing as many pucks from the blue line as San Jose did, but that doesn't mean Montgomery and Dallas will be limiting Pavelski's puck-tipping ability.

"He always knows where the puck is, so he can always know when to go to the net, where to put his stick to give a defenseman an outlet for a tip and also where to find those little pockets of open space to get his stick open," Montgomery said.

"He's never blind to the puck so he's never guessing. As easy as that many sound, you don't know how many times as a coach, any coach at any level, is telling his players 'Don't turn your back on the puck.' It's a lazy habit, and that's what gives Joe an extra foot to two feet of space is that he doesn't turn his back on the puck."

Rebounds and loose pucks (8)

It's not surprising that Pavelski's willingness to go to the front of the net for tips also results in a lot of rebound goals, albeit fewer that require elite hand-eye coordination like deflections do.

"From everyone I've talked to that has coached him, this is something he works on all the time: the tips, the redirections, finding rebounds," Montgomery said. "It's kind of like, why did Dennis Rodman end up with so many more rebounds, offensive rebounds than anybody else? Well, one, he has a great knack for being able to figure out positioning. But there's also a will there to go to dirty areas. [Pavelski's] details and habits are incredible. He's always facing the puck. He's always getting his hands and his stick loose, away from his check and he's always coming back to the puck like a receiver would in football."

His eight rebound goals and 12 tip goals mean that more than half of Pavelski's 38 goals last season came on rebounds or tips. Sure, his shooting percentage was abnormally high, but the amount of rebounds and tips still means that he was in the right area of the offensive zone instead of shooting from the outside, where an outlier shooting percentage could be cause for more concern.

Pavelski's third goal of the season -- Oct. 14 at New Jersey -- was on a rebound and came after an active shift in the offensive zone. As soon as San Jose enters the zone, Pavelski drives the net. Then he chases a rebound, battles for it in the corner, supports it behind the net, goes to the front of the net when the puck goes to the blue line, tries to tip it, then deposits the rebound.

The next two goals could have been counted as ones off the rush, but since Pavelski scored on Timo Meier rebounds, I'm classifying them as rebound goals.

In the first one, his 12th on Nov. 17 against the Blues, Pavelski leads the rush and slips a pass to Meier in the slot. On the rebound, Pavelski's body beats Jay Bouwmeester to the spot and his stick beats Jordan Schmaltz to the puck. He ends the play on the ice pretty jacked up.

In the next one, his 28th on Feb. 2 against Arizona, Logan Couture forces a turnover up the wall, springing Meier on a breakaway. After a Meier shot and a failed clearance, Pavelski is there to clean up the mess.

Both instances included Pavelski driving to the net on the rush, something Montgomery expects from some of his players. After the All-Star break, Montgomery was preaching middle-lane drive, which sent a body towards the net as an option, but also opened up the backside for a shooting opportunity. More on that later.

"You can't always count on the rush goals, but there's always going to be o-zone time," Montgomery said. "There's always going to be rebounds if you're generating enough shot attempts."

The final rebound goal, his 31st on Feb. 16 against Vancouver, is off a possession Pavelski created. He forced a turnover along the wall in the offensive zone, setting up Couture and Meier for a shot that he followed into the slot. The big rebound set up a wide open net and Pavelski's quick release buried it.

The analytics site MoneyPuck has tried to quantify the value of rebounds through expected goals. It assigns a goal value to each shot based on past probabilities of scoring from that spot on the ice and other factors such as shot type and time since last event. Similarly, the site determined which shots create the best rebounds, based on the likelihood that there is a save and how often the rebound after the save is a goal (notated as xGoals of xRebounds).

For instance, if a shot from the right circle is likely to create a rebound that can be scored easily at the far post, its xGoals of xRebounds would be high because it measures the creation of that potential goal.

Last season at 5-on-5, Pavelski had 17.4 expected goals (he actually scored 21), which ranked 19th in the league, immediately behind Nathan MacKinnon and Alex Ovechkin. Of those, 6.2 came off rebounds, tying him for the league lead with John Tavares. With 35.6% of his expected goals on rebounds, Pavelski ranked fifth in the league for largest share of expected production off rebounds (minimum 500 minutes).

Part of that is due to Pavelski's positioning, obviously, and the other part is the quality of rebounds Pavelski is cleaning up from his Sharks teammates. Meier created 3.1 expected goals from his rebounds, third most in the NHL. Evander Kane produced 2.8, 11th in the league. Burns and Gustav Nyquist were also in the top 50 in xGoals of xRebounds.

The Stars, meanwhile, only placed Tyler Seguin in the top 50 of xGoals of xRebounds. He was sixth in the NHL at 2.9.

By using Natural Stat Trick to measure raw number of rebounds created, you arrive at a similar conclusion: the Sharks are good at creating rebounds and so is Tyler Seguin. Seguin was second in the league last season with 35 rebounds created at 5-on-5, more than any San Jose player. But the Sharks placed five players in the league's top 11 (Kane, Burns, Meier, Pavelski and Karlsson).

Given Seguin's quantity and quality of rebounds created, it could make him an attractive player to pair with Pavelski's rebounding and tipping skills. Since Montgomery likes to shuffle lines often, it's possible the Stars use that during the season, even though he mentioned wanting to use the right-handed centers on different lines. By splitting up Seguin and Pavelski (with left-handed faceoff men Jamie Benn and Roope Hintz), Montgomery would have favorable matchups on either side of the ice during faceoffs.

From the left circle (7)

At 5-on-5, Pavelski actually had more shots from the right side of the ice than from the left (see the data via Hockey Viz below), but he was dangerous from the left circle, especially on the power play.

Pavelski profiles as a net-front player on the power play because of his rebounds and tipping, but his versatility makes him valuable in the Stars' power play that thrives on motion not only of the puck but also of the players. When the players were fluid in the offensive zone, that's when the Dallas power play was dangerous both in the regular season (remember that Winnipeg game on Oct. 6) and during the playoffs (hello, Game 4 against Nashville).

"All those guys should be able to be interchangeable because we can set up the players where we want them to, but we got to be able to have a shot-first attitude," Montgomery said.

Let's assume this is the first power play unit:

Joe Pavelski

Tyler Seguin - Jamie Benn - Alexander Radulov

John Klingberg

(Which could leave the second one looking something like this:

Corey Perry

Roope Hintz - Esa Lindell - Gurianov/Dowling/Janmark/Other

Miro Heiskanen)

Pavelski and Seguin can both play on their one-timer side in the left circle. Benn, Pavelski and Radulov can occupy the net-front. Seguin and Radulov can flip-flop to give a different look. Pavelski can also provide versatility and movement in the offensive zone on the power play. Let's take a look at how.

On this goal, Pavelski's 16th at Toronto on Nov. 28, he begins in the middle of the ice and tries to collect a loose puck close to the right circle. As the puck rotates to the point with Burns, Pavelski finds the open ice in the left circle, where Couture previously was. Couture shifts to the middle slightly and Burns eventually finds Pavelski for a tough-angle one-timer. The shot would have gone wide if Frederik Andersen hadn't clipped it, so that's a bit lucky, but the positioning and movement was noteworthy.

Pavelski is stationed in the left circle for this one, but notice where his teammates are. Couture at the point? Burns and Karlsson ending up in the right circle? That's movement in the offensive zone that creates passing and shooting lanes. Couture sets up Pavelski for a short-side rocket.

"It's a legitimate bomb, which is going to give us a nice option moving him and Seggy around," Montgomery said.

Kevin Labanc handles most of the hard work on this one, taking advantage of the open ice in front of him, forcing the Colorado defense to collapse on him and opening a cross-ice lane to Pavelski. Pavelski also makes a subtle move toward the net that gives Labanc more room to pass.

The Sharks were mobile in their power play, and the Stars want to do the same thing.

"Once the puck funnels to the net, the guy who retrieves the puck, if it's Jamie Benn or it's Joe as the guys in the middle of the ice because they're hungry and great at the net-front for rebounds, they recover the puck, they go low to high, they got to go support that d-man," Montgomery said.

"So now Seggy, Rads or Roope or Corey Perry, they have to go into the middle of the ice. You've got to be able to read off each other and react. When the bodies are moving, the puck's moving, it gets hard for penalty killers to keep track of everybody. That's where you find the open lanes, seams for tips and one-timers."

Odd-man rushes (6)

Scoring in transition isn't a huge part of Pavelski's game, and likely will decrease over time with his climbing age, but knowing where to be on the rush is important to Montgomery.

When he scored his fifth goal of the season, on Oct. 23 at Nashville, Pavelski takes a feed from Couture and buries it. He's the wide player who gives the puck-handler (Couture in his case) options to either pass it to the backside or send it toward the net, where Kane is crashing. Once the puck gets on Pavelski's stick, he doesn't stick-handle at all and instead waits for an opening before sniping it.

Then there's the two times Pavelski tore the hearts from Winnipeg, once on an overtime shorthanded winner, once at the end of the third period, but both on 2-on-1s where he's driving the net.

"That's why he makes others around him better because he's always retrieving pucks, rebounds, getting sticks on pucks, fighting for space, which creates other people to be wide open," Montgomery said.

"Same thing with the middle-lane drive. Whether he's the wide guy or the middle-lane drive guy, he knows where he's supposed to be to get himself open and his release is incredible. Doesn't stick-handle pucks, gets it in one motion, he's releasing it and he's worked on that, over and over and over again."

Other (5)

These included two empty-netters, one puck off an opponent, one wraparound and one from the right circle. They all count, but in Pavelski's game, they're more of an outlier than anything.

Here are all of Pavelski's 38 goals in one video.