Nathan Bastian Is Not a Slight Departure for the Dallas Stars

He's anything but slight, actually

My first thought this morning upon seeing the Stars had signed right-wing Nathan Bastian to a one-year, league-minimum NHL deal was that Arttu Hyry’s chances of making the NHL team out of camp had probably vanished.

My second thought was this: If we take it as read that Mikael Granlund was always a bit of an LTIR-enabled luxury for last year’s team, then these Stars have essentially replaced Evgenii Dadonov and Mason Marchment’s 42 goals last season with Radek Faksa and Nathan Bastian, who combined for 9.

How you feel about that sentence will probably dictate how you feel about the Bastian signing in general. But if you want to hear the buzzwords, here’s the quote from Jim Nill in the Stars’ press release:

“Nathan will add forward depth and a physical presence to our lineup, both of which will be valuable to our organization,” said Nill. “We’re looking forward to watching him take the next step of his career with the Stars and are excited to welcome him to Dallas.”

To my way of thinking, you can extrapolate Bastian’s role from that sentence entirely: The 6-foot-4, 200+lbs Bastian is here to Bring the Beef. He’s known for his hitting, as you gotta do something with that sort of size if you want to stick in the NHL, and Bastian has done that.

This signing further signals a change in approach we’ve been anticipating, too. After a few years of Pete DeBoer rolling out Craig Smith and Dadonov for some sneaky goal-scoring from the right wing in the bottom six, the signing of Bastian may reflect Glen Gulutzan’s ideas about what else lower lines need to bring, with a bit more focus on heavy forecheckers “arriving” at the right time, as opposed to looking for a better finisher who waits for a stretch pass in the neutral zone.

And when you zoom out for a second and consider a depth line featuring Faksa centering Jamie Benn and Nathan Bastian, there is something appealing about the idea of just forcing another team to deal with that for an entire shift. That’s a lot of Character™ on one line, certainly. The question will be whether the Stars end up missing Marchment and Dadonov’s production more than they delight in Faksa and Bastian’s defensive aptitude.

In terms of what you bloodthirsty jackals are curious about, Bastian had one fight last year, in which he got a broken jaw in exchange for standing up for his teammate Paul Cotter after Ryan Lomberg attempted a pretty dangerous check on a vulnerable Cotter low along the boards. He’ll stand up for his teammates, but Matt Rempe, he is not.

That’s a good thing, to be clear. His play-driving impacts have generally kept him above-water, which is decent for a lower-line forward. But he doesn’t score much, so you shouldn’t expect him to amass even half of Dadonov’s 20 goals from last year.

In fact, it would not entirely inaccurate to say that Bastian is like Faksa in the form of a winger: Goals tend to disappear on both ends of the ice when he’s out there. And if you use him primarily as a defensive specialist to soak up tougher minutes, he’s got good value.

Bastian draws more penalties than he takes, and his excellent defensive impacts tend to outweigh his less-than-impressive work on the offensive side of things. Here’s a chart from HockeyViz that shows that, if you’re into that kind of thing.

I do expect Bastian to play in a similar role to Dadonov, which is to say he probably won’t be a big factor on special teams (with perhaps a little PK action, depending on the lineup any given night), and he’ll end up playing with a variety of linemates throughout the year.

Will Bastian’s defensive game make up for his lack in goal-scoring, compared to someone like Dadonov? That’s the bet the Stars are making, and they aren’t paying very much to make it.

If you have to sign an NHL player in August, a team could do a lot worse than giving a league-minimum deal to a perfectly cromulent forward like Bastian. The opportunity cost is also something to be considered, as signing NHL players makes it that much tougher for AHL players to take that next step. But having NHL depth is always the goal, and the Stars clearly prefer the ability to call up players when needed to paving the way for someone like Justin Hryckowian right out of camp at the expense of having fewer alternatives behind them, and it’s hard to argue with that approach.

Here’s a sample forward lineup, just to illustrate what the Stars are working with in terms of players signed to NHL deals right now. You can swap Bastian for Blackwell if you like, but we’ll have to wait and see what the coach thinks before handicapping these lines too much:

Robertson - Hintz - Rantanen
Duchene¹ - Johnston - Seguin
Steel - Bourque - Bastian
Benn - Faksa - Blackwell
Bäck

Harley-Heiskanen
Lindell-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Lyubushkin
Kolyachonok, Petrovic

There’s more to be said about all of those lines, of course. But the point is, Bastian’s presence basically means players like Hyry or Hryckowian would now have to actually win a spot over players like Colin Blackwell or Oskar Bäck, which will be tough, given the contracts in place. In all likelihood, AHL players will have to wait for an injury to get the chance to stake their claim on the roster.

After the Matt Dumba trade, the Stars could easily fit Bastian under the salary cap² and still have about a million bucks left in cap space, meaning they could feasibly start the season with all eight defensemen on the roster if they want (though I’d be mildly surprised if they did so).

The Stars feel pretty set at this point, even if they aren’t quite as loaded as they were post-deadline last year. They did get a tiny bit deeper today, and that’s kind of the idea behind signing new players.

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If you want to know more about the newest Dallas Stars forward, feel free to imbibe this pump-up mix of Nathan Bastian highlights, nearly a full minute of which consists of Bastian being punched by Brenden Dillon in an empty building.

1. This is something I’m not gonna debate right now, but yeah, I think you could squint a little and see Duchene moving to wing this year, at least in certain situations.

2. PuckPedia shows the Stars over the cap right now, but they inexplicably show Antonio Stranges and Arttu Hyry on the NHL roster. Send those two down and add Kolyachonok, and the Stars would still be under the cap by a couple hundred thousand dollars.