Dallas Stars Preseason Storylines I’m Watching
It’s been a lot of fun covering Dallas Stars training camp and the beginning of the preseason. Not only is everyone in a good mood, but there’s also a wealth of possibilities to talk about. Sure, the NHL roster is mostly set, but the edges are still a bit pliable. And of course, the (hopefully) Stanley Cup Playoffs roster almost certainly won’t look the same as the Opening Day roster.
But outside of the 13th forward and 6th/7th defenseman debates, there are a lot of little things that keep bouncing around the largely vacant spaces in my mind. So, with a few hours to kill before an 8pm start in Colorado tonight, here are a few storylines that have piqued my interest so far:
Alain Nasreddine said after practice today that the team had a bit of a down year in faceoffs this past year relative to the season before. In raw percentage, Dallas went from leading the NHL in 2022-23 at 54.8% and dropped all the way to…2nd in the NHL last season, at 54.0%. I didn’t think that was much of a step back, but upon further inspection, Nasreddine may have been thinking primarily of shorthanded faceoffs, where Dallas was also 1st in 2022-23 in PK faceoff percentage at 53.7%, but dropped to 12th last year on shorthanded draws at 45.6%, which is indeed a pretty big difference in a pretty critical situation. I tend to think that coaches focus disproportionately on faceoff impact when it comes to roster construction, but there’s no denying that it’s of material benefit to a team to win more draws, and it sounds like the Stars intend to do just that. Look for them to continue to have two center(ish)men of opposite handedness on every line this year, as usual.
In that same vein, Mavrik Bourque centered a line with Logan Stankoven and Mason Marchment on Saturday night against St. Louis. For him to be trusted as a center right out of the gate would be a big deal for Peter DeBoer, but it wouldn’t be altogether shocking. In fact, Bourque was taking faceoffs alongside Jamie Benn in his NHL debut last April, but he largely played right wing next to Sam Steel in his other NHL appearance, which came in Game 6 in Edmonton. I asked Bourque about faceoffs this morning, and he said that DeBoer has told him winning more faceoffs is a key way to earn more trust and opportunities, and I’d be shocked if Bourque doesn’t do just that. The Stars, like so many of the best teams in the NHL, are loaded with multiple centers on every line, but if Bourque does play with Jamie Benn and Stankoven this year, he’ll have every chance to take the same path Wyatt Johnston forged a couple years ago.
As for the AHL, the Texas Stars defensive group should be very good this year relative to last season. If we assume Lundkvist is the 7th defenseman behind Brendan Smith and Ilya Lyubushkin, that means Texas could have players like Kyle Capobianco, Alex Petrovic, and Lian Bichsel leading their blue line in front of returning players like Gavin White, Christian Kyrou, and Luke Krys. Texas was shorthanded almost all year, after first losing Gavin Bayreuther to a serious injury right at the start of the season and then suddenly seeing Lian Bichsel depart for Sweden midyear before returning for the playoffs. For the organization as a whole, it will also be good for Dallas to have more experienced depth defenesemen to call upon, should they end up needing them. I can’t imagine anybody wants to see them playing a sixth defenseman for two or three minutes in another playoff game this time around.
Nasreddine mentioned this morning that Magnus Hellberg is playing the first two periods tonight, then Remi Poirier will play the third. This seems to support what Stephen Meserve said back in August about Hellberg being the presumptive third goalie in the organization. If Poirier is going to prove he can be an NHL goalie someday, this season may be one of his last chances to do so down in Texas. On the other side of things, Hellberg brings a lot more NHL experience to the third goaltender position than Matt Murray did last year, when Scott Wedgewood played 11 straight games in Jake Oettinger’s absence before DeBoer finally decided to try Matt Murray for a game. Hellberg seems likely to inspire a tad more confidence, if only because he is very tall, and who doesn’t trust tall people? For the record, Hellberg told me last week that he really admired what Artus Silovs did in the spring, coming in for Vancouver and keeping their playoff hopes alive under a ton of pressure. There’s a world in which Hellberg could find himself in a similar position, but of course the Stars would prefer to avoid that necessity.
If Wyatt Johnston does indeed play with Roope Hintz and Jason Robertson (presuming he is indeed ready by season’s beginning), I’ll be interested to see if their chemistry continues to be as overpowered as it was in spurts last season. It’s weird to realize that Hintz is the “old” player on that line at just 27, but that could be a dominant line for a few years if things continue as they’ve gone recently. Take all year to think of your potential line nicknames, and we’ll begin to consider them, come April.
The Seguin-Marchment-Duchene line’s chemistry will be very interesting to watch this year. But if they don’t start strong, I could easily see Marchment swapping out with Blackwell or Dadonov to try to give it a jump start. The presumptive bottom nine has a lot of interchangeable parts, and it wouldn’t be too surprising if the coaching staff ends up trying some different line combos in the middle six just to get a taste of what change could look like, should it become necessary.
Seeing Jordie Benn walking around Comerica Center is weird, but it also feels like everything is back to where it should be. The new player development assistant/AHL scout has been around the rink the past few days while his brother practices on it, and he joins the ranks of former Stars players like Travis Morin, Max Fortunus, Brent Severyn, Marty Turco, Rich Peverly and Ben Bishop (and many others) who still contribute pretty significantly to the organization. No sign of Aleš Hemský yet, but Owen Newkirk said that Matěj Blümel is living with the former Stars winger in what I’m assuming is a Czech version of the Pavelski/Johnston setup. Blümel hasn’t started to stubbornly refuse to shoot the puck in hopes of making a comically impossible pass, however, so perhaps the influence hasn’t really begun yet.