New Year’s Eve Dallas Stars Update: Matt Dumba Activated, Lian Bichsel Reassigned to AHL, and What It Says about…Nils Lundkvist?

Today at morning skate, Pete DeBoer had some news for the media: Not only would Casey DeSmith be starting in goal for Dallas on New Year’s Eve, but the defense would be changed as well.

After eight games with the Dallas Stars, Lian Bichsel has been sent back down to Texas. And this time, it wasn’t just a one-day move for cap space accrual. Matt Dumba was activated off Injured Reserve, and Bichsel was not recalled, meaning he has likely already reported to the Texas Stars, who have a game in Manitoba tonight.

It was a bit of a surprise for a couple of reasons, the first of which being that just yesterday at practice, DeBoer said “Dumba’s getting close,” rather than saying he was ready to go. It’s not unusual for coaches to be a little tight-lipped about their roster plans, but it still was a mild surprise today to find out Dumba was in. That means Dumba will have been out just over three weeks, and given that DeBoer also emphasized that same timeline for Mason Marchment’s recovery, we might expect to see Marchment back in the lineup sometime in mid-January, if all goes to plan.

The bigger surprise today was the one that always seemed inevitable in the short term whenever Dumba was activated, which is that Bichsel was sent down to the AHL. How long he’ll stay there is anyone’s guess, but DeBoer had some telling comments about Bichsel over the last couple of days.

On Monday at the optional practice, for instance, DeBoer had this to say about the Stars’ rookie defenseman yesterday when asked about whether Bichsel was looking like a mainstay on the NHL roster:

“You know, that’s a question for Jim [Nill]. I thought he’s playing well. His last game might have been his best game here. So he looks like he’s getting better every night.”

And here’s DeBoer today after Morning Skate, when talking about the young Swiss defender:

“I think the message to him is, ‘you got a good taste of the NHL, and we got a good taste of what you’re capable of at this level.’ There’s always details in your game you can work at, but you know, a great first impression.”

“A lot of times you go down, you go back, and you lose some of the details that is critical at this level that you can get away with down there. So that’s the message to him: play more minutes, but make sure you’re playing with that NHL detail.”

Reading between the lines, I don’t see this as quite the same thing as the Thomas Harley Defensive Recalibration Course from a couple of years ago. As has been said ad nauseam, Harley was given almost a full year back in the AHL after spending much of the prior season with Dallas in order to really get his defensive game’s level up to match the high level of his offensive play. The organization saw a potential hole in his game, and they used the 2022-23 season to get it shored up before recalling him for the home stretch of the season and subsequent playoff run.

Bichsel does not have the same specific hole in his game that Harley did at that time, although he also doesn’t have Harley’s offensive ceiling, either. I don’t think there’s one massive flaw in his game that needs to be fixed, but moreso just the natural growth and acclimation that any 20-year-old defenseman has to do to be an NHL regular. After all, Bichsel has been sheltered a bit, but he’s also been getting regular shifts on the third pairing, mostly with Ilya Lyubushkin. Bichsel hasn’t revolutionzed the defense or anything, but in talking with him at what turned out to be his last NHL practice for at least a little while yesterday, he told me he’s been feeling a lot more comfortable at the NHL level with the timing of plays and pressure.

Bichsel also mentioned that one of the most challenging things about the jump from the AHL to the NHL is how well you have to read the neutral zone, particularly with opposing forwards coming through it with speed. If you make one slight hesitation or wrong step, the best NHLers can exploit it in ways most AHL forwards can’t, so it’s critical to have your gap, footwork, and momentum exactly where they need to be.

That lines up quite a bit with what DeBoer said he told Bichsel when he was sent down, too. Less diligent neutral zone management is something that you might be able to get away with more at a lower level of play, where there aren’t as many world-class forwards ready to blow past you if you give them one extra step. And Bichsel’s size and reach, with DeBoer also mentioned earlier this year as tools he could use to compensate for his lack of NHL experience, are certainly helpful as well. So, however long Bichsel is down in Cedar Park for, it sounds like he has a very good idea of what he and his coaches want him to stay on top of. And given what he’s shown so far, Bichsel has every chance of coming back even stronger in his next stint.

The main question, I think, is whether Bichsel is going to be able to learn those things best in the AHL as opposed to the NHL. Reading between the lines a bit, I think there are two possiblities about how the coaches feel about moving Bichsel back to Texas for now.

One way to interpret things is that DeBoer could have been saying that he was seeing growth and progression from Bichsel at the NHL level already, which means the reassignment to Cedar Park is a necessary evil of the cap situation, but that Bichsel would only continue to grow and learn and improve if he were to stay at the NHL level.

Or, of course, it’s possible that DeBoer simply wanted to say something positive and encouraging right before delivering the disappointing news to Bichsel, but that he is absolutely fine with the move for the time being, as Dumba has enough experience to make the lineup stronger, at least in the short term.

My guess (and it’s only that) is DeBoer might see Bichsel as a viable option for his best defense group as it stands now, even with a healthy Dumba. Brendan Smith was not being selected in place of Bichsel once the flu stopped taking down blueliners, so at the very least, the head coach trusted Bichsel enough to keep playing him even after the Stars had seven healthy defensemen again. And given that Dumba was getting healthy scratched this year even before his off-ice injury, I don’t think DeBoer sees Bichsel as a markedly inferior option, even right now, to where Dumba’s play is at this year. There’s a reason his usage has trended downward this season, after all.

Dumba could certainly elevate his game and change that equation. Multiple injuries in the first half of a season with a new team are always going to make life harder, but the whole point of signing free agents to multi-year deals is for the relative certainty of what they can provide. And thus far, Dumba’s play hasn’t been consistent enough to make the roster choices easy ones. And that is a story in itself that Dumba needs to re-write if he hopes to lock down a lineup spot going forward.

But in the midst of all this, it’s notable that there’s one player who isn’t even been talked about as a possible scratch, at least for now. And that player is Nils Lundkvist, whose ice time has been steadily rising as the year has gone on. It would have been easy, in past years, for Lundkvist to be scratched in order to put Dumba in his place and keep Bichsel up for a bit longer, but I think Lundkvist has inched his way closer to a position of trust than in the past two years under DeBoer, at least for the time being.

That could mean Lundkvist is actually part of the ideal plan for Game 1 of the playoffs. It could also mean they’re trying to make him look as strong as possible to boost his value in case they decide to trade him at some point. Or it could just be a result of the flu bug and the heavy schedule depleting the lineup, making Lundkvist the best option available to take the extra minutes the Stars had to give. But either way, a coaching staff that explicitly said after Game 20 that it was time to stop learning and start winning games has played Lundkvist almost every night, and with fairly consistent usage.

That said, I have to admit that I’m skeptical Lundkvist will truly end up in the final plans for this team in April. The last two playoff runs really seemed to show DeBoer’s preference for a different type of defenseman in the lower pairings of his lineup than Lundkvist, all things being equal, and I don’t think enough has changed in that regard. If I had to make a guess, I’d say the coaching staff would prefer to upgrade both their RHD spots currently occupied by Dumba and Lundkvist before the trade deadline. But again, we’re still not even halfway done with the season, and there are a ton of roster moves that are surely yet to be made. And there aren’t a lot of right-handed defensemen out there as obvious upgrades, although that hasn’t stopped Jim Nill in the past.

The best-case scenario for Lundkvist is probably that he parleys the trust he’s earned so far into a third-pairing assignment on the right-hand side down the stretch, and that the Stars only acquire one big right-handed defender at the deadline, leaving Lundkvist to battle Dumba for the final spot. And if ice time is any indication, he just might have a chance at winning that competition.

***

One other update from today was DeBoer’s final statement on the NHL’s $100,000 fine levied against Dallas for the practice the team had on December 26. Here’s what DeBoer said when asked about the NHL’s official announcement of the fine yesterday afternoon:

“Pretty self-explanatory,” DeBoer said of the fine. “You know, it wasn’t a practice, but, you know, we had ice available and we weren’t allowed to. Won’t happen again. Moving on.”

I found it slightly interesting that DeBoer added a final insistence about the “optional” (as he called it originally on December 27) not being a “practice,” per se, but simply “ice available.” (or “voluntary ice” as he said on December 28 when asked about it). After all, the NHL investigated the incident, and their official statement used the word “practice” and the term “team activity.” That’s pretty conclusive verbiage used by the league, who certainly knows more of the details than are publicly available and felt confident in issuing the fine.

Anyway, that’s likely to be the last we’ll hear on the matter from DeBoer, at least for now. I wonder if his final insistence today about its not being a “practice” was the former lawyer just wanting the final word on the matter, or whether the coaches genuinely thought they were acting within the constraints of the CBA on December 26. Perhaps they really do have a bone to pick with the technicalities of the ruling, but despite my asking multiple times for more details, it’s clear that DeBoer isn’t going to explain any further, at least for now.

Of course, if we learn more that we can report, the readers of this web site will surely be the first ones to know.