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Game #37 – Hawks vs. Stars Spotlight: The May Never Be Ready For Primetime Players

By Sam Fels 1671 0

You have to hand it to the Dallas Stars. It seems every couple of seasons, maybe more often, they’re ready to shed their skin. First they were going to be the Run n’ Gun n’ Fun team under Lindy Ruff. Then when that didn’t go anywhere they were going to be a more solid unit under Ken Hitchcock that took its limited opportunities while boring the lower intestines out of everyone. And then that didn’t work so they went outside the box to the University of Denver for Jim Montgomery. And lo and behold…they’re on pace for the same 85-92 points they seemingly always get and never go anywhere. They’re just south of the Wild in the consistency standings, and right there with them in the “Never Do Anything That Matters” standings. Kind of symbolic.

While Jim Nill always wins the Best Offseason GM Award, nothing ever seems to really change on the ice when the season starts. The thought was that Hitchcock was too conservative for the modern game, and that he didn’t really get through to younger players who want to get up the ice more often and faster than Jabba The Hitch would ever be comfortable with.

And yet so far this season, under the supposed forward-thinking Montgomery, the Stars get less attempts, less shots, less goals, and less chances than they did last year under Hitch. They’re not even getting as good of goaltending as they did, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re on pace for 89 more irrelevant points as a team that neither makes them a contender or puts them anywhere in the draft to make a difference next year.

So what’s the problem here? It’s not the top line, which has produced every year as long as Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn have been together. Now they have Alex Radulov joining the fun. It’s not the goalies, as Ben Bishop has a .920 this year and has been more than solid in his time in Texas.

So scrape beneath that just a bit, and you see the young players that the Stars have pinpointed and hoped would pick up the secondary scoring, and you start to find some answers.

Devin Shore: Second round pick in 2012, point-per-game or thereabouts for three seasons in the NCAA. Had injury problems in his first season as a pro in the AHL but still was a point-per-game when he was around there. Has put up 24 goals and 55 points in two NHL seasons and this year is on pace for…the same 13 goals and 32-ish points that weren’t enough to be a second line player in the first place.

Radek Faksa: 1st round pick in 2012. Impressive numbers in junior. Good enough in his first season as a pro to spend half the year in Dallas. 17 goals last year in his first full-season in the NHL, looks set for bigger things. On pace for barely 14 goals this year while only just averaging a shot-on-goal per game.

Mattias Janmark: Picked up from the Red Wings in what was thought to be something of a steal. Very good numbers in Sweden. Went from 15 goals to 19 goals last year and looked to be a genuine second-line player. Has two goals this year and like Faksa, is barely registering a shot per game.

Brett Ritchie: 2nd round pick in 2011. Two-time member of Canada’s WJC team. Bounced between the AHL and NHL for a few seasons. Put up 16 goals last year in his first full foray into the big-time. Has two goals this year and is basically a 13th or 14th forward.

Val Nichushkin: Looked to be a real ass-kicker in his rookie year with 14 goals in ’13-’14. Missed almost all of the next year with a terrible injury, never really looked recovered the next season, fucked off back to Russia for two years, and has yet to score this term.

Honka! Honka! (Julius Honka): 1st round pick in 2014. Tore up the OHL in his one year there. Always thought that Ruff and Hitchcock wouldn’t give him the time of day because of just being a young d-man. Has four points this season though with some promising underlying numbers. Stars needed him to push the play beneath John Klingberg and especially in his absence. Hasn’t really happened. Now behind Miro Heiskanen on the depth-chart

And once again, the Stars are a top line, Klingberg (when healthy) and that’s it. They hope they’ve cracked the code on defense with Miro Heiskanen, and maybe they have But until they finally produce a second line from somewhere, they seem destined to be scenery in the Central Division.

 

 

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Game #37 – Hawks vs. Stars Q&A: Taylor Baird of DefendingBigD.com

By Sam Fels 2020 0

Taylor is the editor-in-chief at DefendingBigD.com. You can follow her on Twitter @TaylorDBaird.

The Stars switched from Ken Hitchcock to Jim Montgomery before the season. What’s the biggest change you’ve noticed from the two coaches, other than the team playing hockey that doesn’t feel like an existential crisis?

It’s hard to tell what Monty wants this team to be as they’ve been absolutely devastated by injuries on the backend. They’ve been without John Klingberg for 6+ weeks, longer for Connor Carrick and Marc Methot. Stephen Johns has yet to play a game this season. At one point, 12D on the depth chart was playing in the top six at the NHL level. That is…less than ideal. They’ve been one of the best defensive teams even with all those injuries, so it’s safe to say being responsible in their own end is part of the identity. The offensive side of the puck is less clear, as Dallas relies on their blue line to generate offense, and with that position decimated by injury…

Seems like everyone is awfully excited about Miro Heiskanen down there…

All aboard the Heiskanen hype train! He looks like a veteran out there, and as he’s been thrust into a 1D role with all those injuries, he’s only grown in confidence. He has the trust of the coaching staff and is a big part of the Stars being a top 10 PK team. His game is already close to complete, and he’s drawn comparisons to Nicklas Lidstrom and Scott Niedermayer. He’s only 19.

The Stars have been waiting for a bust-out from the likes of Faksa, Janmark, and Shore for what feels like forever. Is this all they are by now?

Maybe? Faksa seemed to have a bit more spark when he was shifted to wing last game, so maybe his scoring comes back a touch. He’s still one of the best shutdown forwards the Stars have, and having a guy that’s been in the discussion of Selke nominations last season is not anything to sneeze at. Janmark and Shore are likely what they are now, though if they had a more shoot-first linemate maybe they’d find some apples more often as they both make some good plays.

Tyler Seguin‘s shooting percentage seems to have cratered. Just bad luck or is there something in his game?

He’s having the worst of luck. He’s not going to shoot at a career low percentage for too long. He’s due for a hot streak, and there’s no better time than the present to get that going with Dallas finally getting some time at home instead of spending like 30 of 52 days on the road or something.

 

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Game #37 – Hawks vs. Stars Douchebag Du Jour: Jamie Goes South

By Sam Fels 1521 0

We ran this last year, but it’s one of our faves. So as a Christmas present, we give it to you again, just like Jamie wouldn’t. 

Last time these two met, we went down on what makes Jamie Benn so angry. We got to the bottom of what might be irking him, to see if we could lap up what make Benn tick. Maybe, if we played our cards right–took it down, if you will–we could bring his problems to their knees. Sometimes, you just have to put your face in there, y’know? You can’t just expect things to come to you. Put your love out there, and you’ll get it back. Give if you want to receive, as it were.

But we couldn’t quite bring it through. Benn is leading the Stars in penalty minutes, speaking to his inner frustration, which he just can’t seem to open up. The bile is rising, but he can’t taste it. If Benn could just sink down into it, and see what he can’t get to. Maybe if he just took a look, and tried to solve his problems, things would just open up for him. And then he could be a player no one ever dreamed of.

That’s the thing with sports, in order to achieve all you can you have to realize there are things under the surface that you have to face. That you have to conquer. You have to do things that at first seem distasteful, maybe even gross. You have to push yourself through, no matter what might get stuck in your teeth. Maybe you’ll feel surrounded, maybe it’ll be dark and hot and you won’t know exactly what you’re doing. But then you just close your eyes and guess, and sometimes it works. Maybe this is why Jamie Benn has never seen a conference Final. He’s never gotten “halfway,” if you will.

But until Benn is willing to go where he hasn’t before, he’s never going to taste victory.

 

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You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Your Four-Time Reigning Offseason Champs

By Sam Fels 1867 0

That’s probably not fair. Because for once, Jim Nill and the Dallas Stars didn’t do something in the summer that had every hockey writer falling off their chairs and onto a Timbo’s wrapper(s). That’s usually been the M.O. in Texas. Whether it was signing Ben Bishop or trading for Jason Spezza or Tyler Seguin or whatever draft pick it was this time, it felt like very summer they were telling us the Dallas Stars had “arrived.” Arrived at what exactly I couldn’t tell you, because they’ve won one playoff series in 10 years. At least no one is expecting them to do that again.

I’ll give them this, I’m really all for teams hiring coaches from outside the normal, old-boys, well-I-drank-with-him-in-an-airport-bar-in-Manitoba crew. Jim Montgomery turned Denver into one of the premier hockey programs in the country, clearly has a knack for developing players, and it’s worth a shot. Sure, it hasn’t gone all that well with David Hakstol in Philly, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a try.

What’s he got in his team? Let’s do the scooping.

20170-2018: 42-32-8 92 points  235 GF 225 GA 51.0 CF% 53.5 xGF% 7.6 SH% .927 SV%

Goalies: THE BISHOP! We was too late…

We’re only two years removed from Ben Bishop being a Vezina finalist, and deservedly so. But the intervening years have just kind of been “meh,”with a .910 split between Tampa and LA and a just a tick above league average .916 in Dallas last year. If he were truly special, one has to wonder if the Lightning would have been so happy to turn the job over to Andrei Vasilevskiy.

Bishop will turn 32 this season, so he’s not ancient. He’s had groin problems the past few seasons, which for a goalie who is 6-6 isn’t ideal. It’s very unlikely that Bishop will sink this team, and there’s still a chance that he finds that Vezina finalist form he’s produced on two different occasions. Though this isn’t the Lightning he’s behind, and it’s a pretty leaky defense, now that Ken Hitchcock isn’t prioritizing it.

Backing him up is Anton Khudobin, Khubes was more than serviceable as Tuukka Rask’s backup last year, and he’s actually the last goalie to not turn into masticated potatoes in Carolina, all the way back in 2014. He’s never been a guy you want to turn a whole season over to, but if Bishop gets hurt for a few weeks he can get you out of it. And he can certainly give you the 20-25 starts needed to keep the starter fresh through the season. Sadly, this is not the Niemi-Lehtonen Axis Of Confusion it was before at the American Airlines Center.

Defense: It’s the same defense as it’s been, except they added Roman Polak to it, which is not something anyone would do if you were trying to make it better. It will be anchored by Esa Lindell and John Klingberg’s moderately-poor-man’s Erik Karlsson act. It’s been a few years now where Klingberg has dominated possession and put up a fine collection of points, so we have to concede he is one of the league’s best even though you can go games without noticing him. His style is just kind of understated, and yet he remains perhaps the best passer from the back end in the league today.

Stephen Johns and Marc Methot will be the second pairing, at least until some part on Methot goes “TWANG!” which it always does. The underlyings haven’t been kind to Johns, but it is he who both Lindy Ruff and Hitch trusted with the tougher shifts than Klingberg, and Montgomery probably won’t be different. He provides the platform for Klingberg, much like Vlasic and Braun did for Burns in San Jose until this season. He’s also been paired with a collection of stiffs since he arrived.

The third pairing is where it gets ugly, and literally so, as that’s where Polak and youngster Dillon Heatherington reside. These are both monoliths, and in Polak’s case one that can’t move. If Montgomery is smart he’ll play the other two pairings 25 minutes a night and try and keep these doofuses off the ice as much as possible. But if Methot gets hurt, which he will, one of these heavy bags is going to have to take harder shifts with Johns, and that’s where it might go balls-up for this team.

It’s not a bad blue line, it’s just awfully thin. They have to stay healthy. And why isn’t Julius Honka part of this? If they replace one of the security guys on the third pairing with Honka and let him run wild, then this has a chance to be a real strength of the team.

Forwards: Montgomery is going to have the same problem the two veteran coaches had before him. There’s a great top line here in Jamie Benn (and his fear of all things southern), Tyler Seguin, and Alex Radulov. But below that there’s borderline mummy in Jason Spezza and a raft of younger players who have just been “not quite” their whole careers. Matthias Janmark, Radek Faksa, Devin Shore, Brett Ritchie are names we’ve heard for a while who promise to break through this time because now they get it, and then April rolls around and they all have 35 points and the Stars are out of it again. Let’s just say they have to prove it to be nice.

Valeri Nichushkin, who in his rookie year looked like he was going to tear the sky off the world at times and then just was kind of there, has returned from a sabbatical in the KHL. Injuries didn’t help him, as he missed a whole season in his first go. He didn’t really do dick in Russia either, so counting on him to be the secondary scoring the Stars have been crying out for for three seasons is probably folly.

Outlook: The Stars didn’t miss out by much last year. You can squint and see where things might improve for them. Maybe Bishop has one more brilliant season in him. Maybe being free of Hitchcock-shackles turns the defensive corps into more of a weapon, especially if Honka flowers. Maybe those kids just were too suppressed under Hitch (and you can easily see why). But they had their chance under Ruff too and never did quite enough.

The top line will score. Klingberg will be great. If they can get one or two others in on the fun, they could sneak back into the playoffs. If anyone important gets hurt, they’ll be sunk.

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Central Matters

By Sam Fels 2418 0

We took a bit of a tour through the league last week, but of the more local concerns, what have the other Central Division teams been up to this offseason?

Nashville Predators – The reigning champs haven’t really done much of anything other than watch PK Subban have the summer we all dream of having. They have a ton of cap space but have yet to use it, and Ryan Hartman and Juuse Saaros remain unsigned. Perhaps they’re keeping their powder dry for next summer when they sign Ryan Ellis and/or Pekka Rinne to utterly hilarious extensions. This is probably a team that could use more firepower up front, despite what they keep telling you. Maybe they’re spending it on the Eli Toivanen PR machine. Not sure. Still awfully silent on the Austin Watson case, and they’ll almost assuredly welcome him to training camp with open arms because David Poile is the same bag of shit that every other NHL GM is when it comes to that sort of thing, and don’t let Preds fans tell you different.

Winnipeg Jets – The Jets have also been remarkably quiet, but you can do that when you probably were the West’s most complete team last season. There are still extensions waiting for Hellebuyck, Trouba, Tanev, and Lowry, and the first two could be quite expensive. Even Lowry should get more than you’d think as one of the better checking forwards last year. They lost Stastny to Vegas, but this was a borderline great team before he showed up, and going Scheifele-Little-Perreault-Lowry, or moving Copp or Roslovic to the middle should still make for a great team. They still need a backup goalie of some kind because Hellebuyck isn’t going to play 70 games, and I’ll laugh pretty damn hard if they bring Pavelec back to do that. Still, this is a team that needs to keep space reserved for next summer when Wheeler, Copp. Laine, and Connor are all up for new deals. This is still a team you have to figure out why they can’t come out of the West instead of why they can.

Minnesota Wild – Other than scouring the black market for bionic limbs for Zach Parise, this is the same collection of “Oh that guy” it’s been for at least five years now. J.T. Brown or Eric Fehr don’t really move the needle, and they’ll count on kids like Kunin or Greenway to take this rabble any farther than it’s gone, which they can’t do. Matt Dumba remains unsigned, though they have plenty of space to accommodate whatever his number comes in at. Bruch Boudreau “GO GO GO” ways and Devan Dubnyk probably monkey-hump this team to another playoff appearance, the question for everyone is what good will that do? This is a team screaming for a major shakeup that simply can’t produce one.

Colorado Avalanche – This was a team whose main goal was to not fuck up their rebuild too much, though they’ve been whispered to be in on Erik Karlsson. Matt Calvert is an interest signing who didn’t cost much at $2.8 per, and if he’s restricted to middle six minutes would be a boon to their depth. Tyson Barrie is somehow still here even though they’ve been trying to trade him since the first Obama administration and now he kinda sucks. They brought in Phillip Grubauer to replace Semyon Varlamov, which should be an upgrade. Basically, this team is looking at how much Yost, Kerfoot, Girard, Compher, Rantanen, and Kamenev grow for whatever their improvement is going to be, and that’s basically all they should do. It’s not as promising in Denver as some would have you believe, but it’s far from hopeless either.

St. Louis Blues – We went over this last week, but this is how a team should react to missing the playoffs. Bozak and O’Reilly are massive upgrades on what they had, and that includes Stastny. $4M on David Perron is a complete waste of time other than to my sense of mirth, but given what’s here he can pretty much be restricted to third-line duties which is all he’s ever really been. The defense is still slow and overrated, and Jay Gallon is going to piss fire all over whatever they try and do, but at least it’s a team acting with some urgency.

Dallas Stars – They were poised to make the biggest splash by acquiring Karlsson, and then fucked it up by bragging to everyone how badly they were bending over the Senators and hence the Sens pulled out. So now they’re left with the same problematic squad Jim Nill has built over the years. The return of Nichushkin at least raises some eyebrows, because he flashed being a dominant power forward in his first go-around. It was just drowned in a sea of confused faces the rest of the time. Still, this remains a great top line with Jason Spezza trying not to disintegrate behind it and Martin Hanzal gasping for air. And that hasn’t been addressed. They brought in Roman Polak, which I’m basically out of words for, and he’ll kill Julius Honka’s will to live by December 1st. Ditto Marc Methot and Stephen Johns. Also whatever’s left of Ben Bishop is claiming to still play goal, though Khudobin is not a bad insurance policy.

So if you want to feel better, other than the Blues this is a division full of teams that have stood still. Except the Hawks were worse than all of them last year, and right now you can only see them topping Dallas and Colorado with the second being a real stretch. If Dubnyk finally goes off the boil the Wild actually have a chance to be real bad, but Boudreau never has teams that are real bad in the regular season.

So it’s an even bigger shame the Hawks didn’t do anything to try and jump up in the standings, because it was there to be done.

 

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Let’s Laugh At The Dallas Stars, While Also Saving Brandon Saad

By Sam Fels 2873 0

For the entire length of our existence, a valuable trait has been schadenfreude. We haven’t always needed it, but when we have the Canucks, or Blues, or Detroit, or Canucks again, then the Blues again, have always provided a hearty laugh. We’ve had other targets, but no matter how bad things get for the Hawks or how laughable they are for others, we can redirect that to someone else and have a good chuckle and go on about our day with a bounce in our step.

So let’s spend some time chortling at the existence of the Dallas Stars.

They’ve been in our crosshairs for a few years now. Mostly because for about three or four offseasons, there’s a legion of hockey writers who can’t wait to declare them and GM Jim Nill “winners of the offseason.” It’s like clockwork. One trade, or one signing, and suddenly there’s a puddle around hockey media members as they race to to be the first to decree, “THIS TIME THE STARS GOT IT RIGHT! CAN’T WAIT FOR SOME TEXAS BBQ IN JUNE!” Mostly, I’m guessing, because deep down all Canadian hockey writers are shit-kickers who just want an excuse to break out the cowboy hat and boots they keep in the closet and are desperate to wear outside of one week in Calgary.

Five seasons later, and just one playoff series win, and here they are, likely to not even get a chance to win a playoff series. But how could that happen when they hired noted genius Ken Hitchcock? Certainly the planets must be totally out of line for such a thing to happen! He was the final piece! Everyone said so! Because the Stars did an exhaustive coaching search, y’see, and they oh so creatively came up with, “Hey what about that guy who won here that one time like 15 years ago?”

So how did it end up here, five points out with five games to play even after last night’s OT win over the Flyera? Well, you probably have to start with the goaltending, which has put up a combined .902 SV% in March. That’s not going to win you a lot, as you probably know around here.

And really, who could have seen Ben Bishop’s .911 last year, his .905 in March of last season, and that Tampa was so fond of him they couldn’t wait to shove the job to Andrei Vasilevskiy at the first opening to do so, and conclude that maybe Bishop didn’t have it anymore? Certainly not Jim Nill! And look, the guy who spent three years fucking over the Stars by ignoring the goaltending situation has fucked it over by actually paying attention to it! It just gets better!

Like all Hitchcock teams, the Stars definitely keep it tight in their own end but are hardly expansive in the other. While they’re second best in terms of expected goals per 60 against, they’re 16th in expected goals for. That’s a team with one of the best top lines in the league and hardly bereft of talent farther down the lineup with Spezza (though old), Faksa, Janmark, Shore, and a couple others. At least that’s what they’ve told us season upon season now. And yet past the top line there isn’t a forward with more than 40 points. Hmmmm…who’s the GM who drafted and/or keeps this young talent they keep bleating about that keeps getting them beat, I wonder?

So as always with Hitch’s teams, keeping it so close means your goalie had better match your defensive leanings, and probably be better. Just like Jay Gallon in St. Louis, when the bottom drops out on that there is no answer. Because they’re certainly not filling it enough to counteract some wonky goaltending. At least Lindy Ruff managed that once.

Boy, I can’t wait to see how Nill wins this offseason.

-As we nearer the end, and the broadcast keeps shitting on Brandon Saad because he seems like the easy target (or Adam Burish threatens to fight him, which I’m sure would end with Saad turning Burish’s face into silly putty), I have this really uneasy feeling the Hawks will trade him and get to use “cap relief” as the reason to keep anyone from looking at it with any measure of scrutiny.

Let me just share this with you. When it comes to individual even-strength scoring chances per 60 minutes, Brandon Saad is 12th among forwards. 13th on that list? CONNOR FUCKING MCDAVID. Brandon Saad, himself, is getting slightly more chances per 60 minutes than the best player on the planet. When it comes to high-danger chances per 60 minutes, Saad ranks 10th among all forwards. 9th on the list? TAYLOR FUCKING HALL. A very likely Hart finalist is only slightly outdoing Brandon Saad when it comes to getting really good chances.

Now, it would be folly to suggest that “finish” is purely luck. It is not, but it’s too simple to say, “He’s not scoring enough,” when we can dig deeper and see why he might not be scoring enough. As we’ve said all season, Saad’s shooting percentage has bottomed out, Even a return to last year’s 11.4%, instead of this year’s 7.9, would see Saad with 25 goals right now. And assuming the power play could ever get the toad out of its ass it might be closer to 30.

Saad could simply repeat this season, process-wise, have his SH% spike to 13 or 14% because he got to see a couple more hungover goalies than this season, and be a 30-35-goal guy and then we’d get all these “redemption” stories.

Trading Saad when his value would be at its lowest, unless a monster return, would be monumentally stupid. Remember this when the Hawks now invariably do so.

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Game #54 – Stars vs. Hawks Spotlight: Our Yearly Stephen Johns Referendum

By Sam Fels 2189 0

This will be the third year we do this. It’s because the trade of Stephen Johns still stings a bit. It’s the trade that the acquisition of Connor Murphy is basically trying to make up for. It’s easy to just say that the punting of Johns simply to get rid of Patrick Sharp’s salary crippled the Hawks blue line to its current state. But is that really true?

Johns has been skating third pairing minutes in Dallas, though he’s flipped at times with Greg Pateryn for second pairing time with Dan Hamhuis. Lately, Ken Hitchcock has found a comfort level with Pateryn and Hamhuis, though he’s not been shy about giving Johns and Honka just about as much time. He’s seeing 13-15 minutes at even-strength per game for the past month.

Metrically, Johns is not having the season he’s had in the past. Of their current regular six, Johns has the worst relative CF% and xGF%. He does start more in his own zone than the top pairing of Klingberg and Lindell, but not as much as Hamhuis and Pateryn which has become something of the shutdown pairing for the Stars.

However, it’s worth taking Johns’s numbers with Julius Honka on their own. Because they’ve taken quite a leap. Honka and Johns together are carrying a 53.4 CF%, and a 52.9 scoring-chance percentage. It’s the best mark he has with any of Dallas’s d-men.

We’re still a long way from learning what Johns is, though getting closer. He’s got 126 games in the NHL, and an additional 100+ in the AHL. So he’s passed that magical 200 professional game mark. What we can say is that he’s best with a puck-mover, where he’s not the one asked to get the puck up the ice solely. Johns’s strengths are in the corners and down low and stepping up at his blue line to squeeze the play. He can do that better behind someone instead of in front of his partner. At least that’s the way it’s worked out so far.

How he would have fit in the Hawks is hard to say, and probably not even worth thinking about. How many times would he have been scratched behind TVR, for instance? While the Hawks might claim different, they were high on him. They tried multiple times to get him out of Notre Dame, and then had to give him special circumstances in Rockford to get him out of South Bend after his junior year. They wanted him in the system badly, and they wanted him in Chicago as well.

It’s just one of those things will never know. If Stan Bowman  gets the sack this summer, or soon, the biggest black mark against him will be that he lost too many NHL-worthy prospects for nothing. Johns had to be the sweetener to get the Stars to take Patrick Sharp. Teuvo had to be that so the Canes would take Bryan Bickell. Phillip Danault was punted in a rental-trade for Tomas Fleischmann and Dale Weise. Those three players are almost certainly the difference between this team being a playoff team right now and where they actually are.

In a salary cap world, your cheap, young talent have to be used or moved along for things you actually use. And you get almost no margin for error. The Hawks are learning that now, and some of that error is Stephen Johns-sized.

 

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Game #54 – Stars vs. Hawks Q&A: Taylor Baird of DefendingBigD.com

By Sam Fels 1904 0

Taylor is the editor-in-chief of DefendingBigD.com. Follow her @TaylorBaird.

Last time we saw the Stars, they were in the muddle of the last playoff spot along with the Hawks. They’ve since separated themselves into the first wild card spot and are hot on the heels of the Blues for the third spot in the Central. What’s been the change?

The Stars defense continues to improve. They’ve climbed from somewhere in the 20’s in the league in terms of goals against average to 5th in the league, allowing only 2.56 goals against on average per game. It’s been improvement in both even strength defense and penalty killing (where they rank 9th in the league today at 82.2% of penalties killed.) The goaltending has been fantastic of late, with Kari Lehtonen having a renaissance in terms of stats (.919SV% and 2.22 GAA) and Ben Bishop’s performance nothing to sneeze at, either (.919 SV%, 2.44 GAA). The offense has also come on of late, averaging slightly more than three goals per game on average now. It’s a big change from the first roughly 15 games of the season, when the team was struggling in all aspects other than the power play.
Jason Spezza only put up 50 points last year, and is on pace for way less this year. He’s been shuttled between center and wing. Is it just time that’s caught up? Is this a major problem?

The Stars have struggled to figure out Spezza’s role on the team. It’s driven by Radek Faksa emerging as a premier two-way center on the team as well as the offseason signing of Martin Hanzal. Spezza struggled offensively at the beginning of the season, and his ice time suffered because of it. He’s also been paired with wingers that haven’t been known for finishing, and think the game a pace behind Spezza. That’s contributed to his offensive decline. One thing I will say is that Spezza has looked better since being reunited with Mattias Janmark, so there’s still hope that it might turn around for him in the last 20ish games or so. As they say, it’s all about how you roll into the playoffs, right?
There are two players in Brett Ritchie and Julius Honka who don’t have the scoring stats you might want, but have glittering underlying numbers. Are the Stars happy enough with these two just pushing the play?

I think they are happy to a degree, yes. With Ritchie, the coach has come out and even said that he’s struggled mightily this year. That’s why he’s found himself pushed down the lineup or eating some healthy scratches at times, as other players look better and produce. But he’s still getting the chance to play through his struggles for the most part, even if it’s to the chagrin of some fans. As for Honka, it’s tough for fans to see a young player with that much potential get jerked around in terms of playing time, but at the end of the day, the Stars need a defense that works. Honka seems to have taken his healthy scratches in stride, and his games of late have shown he’s listened when the coaching staff has said he’s been too cautious in terms of offense. I feel like he will be tough to fit into the lineup when Marc Methot returns to the lineup healthy, if only because I’m not sure he’s done enough to beat out Stephen Johns for the 6th D spot, and Hitch seems to love him some Greg Pateryn (even if the underlying numbers are just blah with him…)
Is. a 2.44 GAA and .919 SV% what you expected out of Ben Bishop? Is that enough to go where the Stars want?
The last few years, all Dallas would have needed was LEAGUE AVERAGE goaltending to go far. Those numbers are far and away better than what Stars fans have seen in the past 5ish years, so we’ll happily take it.
What will the Stars be looking to do at the deadline?
To be honest, I’m not sure there’s much that the Stars will do at the deadline. I think they like their lineup, and it’s been working for them of late, so it’s possible that they won’t want to overpay for a deadline rental. If they target anyone, I’d bet on a top six right wing to add some depth to the second line in terms of scoring, or someone that adds to the second power play unit to make that player set more lethal. But with the draft coming to Dallas this summer, they likely won’t want to deal too many of their picks — and their pipeline of talent isn’t in a position to deal too many of those (though if they are going to do so, blueline seems to be a position of depth but not necessarily strength, and they have a few forwards that could be of interest to other teams.)

 

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