Friday Dallas Stars Roundup: Brendan Smith's Perspective, Cameron Schmidt's Determination, and Radek Faksa's Potential Pairing with Oskar Bäck

Let's catch up on a few things

Gratitude is important.

Dallas went from thanking Radek Faksa for All The Good Times to paying him $6 million over the next three years in the span of three months. May we all live to enjoy a farewell followed so quickly by so lucrative a homecoming.

The Faksa return is even more intriguing on a hockey level, as Faksa (6-foot-3, 215-lbs) is a player in a very similar mold of one Oskar Bäck (6-foot-4, 202 lbs). Both players are natural centers (isn’t everyone these days) who recently played some left wing under Pete DeBoer in addition to the pivot role.

More importantly, both players are defensively inclined, which is to say they swallow up any foolish offense that dares to step onto the ice with them—in both directions. It’s funny, though: as much as the idea of creating a Big Fourth Line can appeal to the amateur roster builder, the Stars don’t really have much size on the right wing once you get past Mikko Rantanen on the depth chart.

Perhaps that means Rantanen will double shift on the fourth line occasionally, as he did to great effect last postseason. But for the bulk of the season, it seems more likely that Colin Blackwell is penciled into that fourth-line spot on the right wing come opening night. Blackwell is 5-foot-8, comfortably the shortest (least-tall?) player in the lineup for Dallas, but his speed and scoring upside are noteworthy assets.

Then again, there’s also Arttu Hyry, the right-shot forward who got a cup of coffee last season. Hyry is 6-foot-2 and 209 lbs (listed at, anyway), and I’m sure there are coaches who would love to put him with Bäck and Faksa purely for how big they’d look lining up before faceoffs. Science has not yet allowed us to teach size, last I was told.

Would Gulutzan want to go with such a line? Well, I’m not entirely sure about that, as he seems to view the game through a more complex lens that just size=good (as do most NHL coaches, in fairness).

But we do know that assistant coach Neil Graham knows Bäck and Hyry quite well, so if there’s an ideal combination of deployment to be had for those players, they’ll be looking for it. Certainly Hyry is in that group of players from Texas (like Justin Hryckowian) who seem likely to get a good shot at winning an NHL spot in training camp, but that still feels like a long ways away, doesn’t it?

Brendan Smith Reflects on the Season

Here’s the most recent update on Brendan Smith, who is a free agent as of this writing:

I had a chance to chat with Smith on cleanout day back in June. Smith said that when he walked into the dressing room in Dallas, it was something of a Groundhog Day moment (his words) when he saw all the leaders in it. Smith said it took him back to his early years with the Red Wings, with whom he debuted in 2011.

But one leader in particular stood out to Smith this year.

“You had Lidström, you had Datsyuk, you had Zetterberg [in Detroit]. I had that similar feel this year,” Smith said. “Obviously having a guy like Benner as our captain, you’re lucky to have a guy like that who’s been established, been around for a long time, understands the game, plays the game the right way, doesn’t cheat it. Having him as a leader is what most organizations are looking for.”