Pondering the Worst-Case Scenarios for the Dallas Stars This Year

It's a Garfield kinda Monday

“I told Tom Wilson to do that.”

Jim Nill said last week that he expects the Stars are pretty much set for the summer. That means that we can officially start prognosticating and projecting, which is to say pretending that our guesses are actually expertise.

As much as keeping Jason Robertson for at least a little while longer is a good thing, there is still a pretty stark reality facing these Stars: they did not get deeper than they were last year. Losing Mavrik Bourque would indicate quite the opposite, in fact. The Stars will need to hope for better injury luck from nearly all of their key players, because they don’t have another first-round talent with NHL experience on the wing ready to take another big step.

There’s always a certain portion of any fanbase that is prone to proclaiming cynicism. When I was growing up, my friend Nick was a big Red Sox fan. I remember Nick repeatedly using the term “worthless” to describe, at various times, Jason Varitek, Kevin Youkilis, Doug Mientkiewicz, Dustin Pedroia, and a host of other players from that legendary 2004 Red Sox team. Mind you, he kept doing this any time one of them would have a bad game even after 2004, when they all broke the curse together. The instant things started looking grim, Nick would start ripping his guys.

This is hardly a new phenomenon, of course. When you care about something and it hurts you, the natural reaction is to steel yourself against further hurt the next time, keeping expectations a bit lower, and waiting a bit longer before opening yourself up, which is to say it’s the hope that kills you, and people are generally disposed to staying alive.

Little wonder, in that light, that so many people are readying themselves for a relative bummer of a Dallas Stars season. Not only did the Stars lose Bourque while adding no significant talent to last year’s team (with apologies to Joel Kiviranta), but they’re also coming off their worst first-round series in five years. Even the most ardent flame of optimism needs a little fuel, after all.

We’ve spent enough time pushing back against that pessimism, so you know the case is pretty much what Nill laid out last week: better health from key players could be the big difference-maker. And while Nill didn’t add this part, I’ll go ahead and state that if the Stars were to drop from last year’s 112 points down all the way to a mere 99 points, that trade off will be worth it if they have a healthier team in April. It’s not like the path out of the Central Division is ever an easy one.

As for the doom and gloom, the case is more complicated. Cynicism clouds our judgment, and we swing wildly from elation to devastation. So, let’s try to give a clear-eyed appraisal of just what could go wrong, and the most likely effects of what such events could mean, for this Dallas Stars team.

Commencing Hypothetical Pessimism

Roope Hintz is one of the biggest X-factors, as his absence in the playoffs clearly made life easier on the Minnesota Wild. He and Jason Robertson were play-driving monsters (relatively speaking here), and while Matt Duchene performed admirably in his stead, the loss of Hintz (and later Hyry) cemented Dallas with essentially two fourth lines in the playoffs, and Minnesota feasted.

But what if Hintz at 30 years old isn’t the X-factor he used to be, especially after getting his hamstring torn in multiple places? After all, his underlying trajectory is already starting to mirror that of a lot of players entering their thirties, and he hasn’t hit 70 points since Pete DeBoer’s first year in Dallas. What if Hintz, healthy or not, just isn’t the player he used to be?

Here’s a fun¹ trivia question for you: in 53 regular season games last year, how many 5v5 goals do you think Roope Hintz scored? The answer is not a terribly encouraging one.

You could add Tyler Seguin’s name to that final sentence, too. He’s shown all the highs and lows his game can bring over the past few years, but there is a probably a non-zero chance that at some point, his deluge of devastating lower-body injuries is going to take away more of his production than his work ethic and hockey IQ can add. The Stars are in a position, this year, where they kind of have to count on both Hintz and Seguin, but there is a real possibility that neither can be what the team will need them to be.

Injuries aside, let’s talk about aging curves in general, as the four oldest players on the Stars are all in that range where you kind of have to operate on a year-to-year basis in terms of expectations: Matt Duchene, Jamie Benn, Tyler Myers, and Casey DeSmith. We’ll begin with the goaltending.

For DeSmith, it’s worth pointing out that goalies are more volatile than other positions, which can often exacerbate age-related decline. However, I remain pretty optimistic about DeSmith based on what we’ve seen the last two years, and in Gulutzan’s D-zone system last year in particular. Decline is inevitable for all human beings, but with a backup’s typical workload, DeSmith should be well-positioned to continue providing surplus value.

If he doesn’t, then the Stars are in the position of needing to either go out and grab a backup from elsewhere, or to ask Rémi Poirier to make his NHL debut in a very critical season. That could work out well, but if we’re strictly discussing the worst-case scenarios, then we have to mention that it could also not work out well. Poirier is an unknown quantity, and many promising goalies struggle to make the leap and stick in the best league in the world. If DeSmith takes a step back and Poirier can’t take a step forward, then your goalie situation is sketchy, putting even more pressure on Jake Oettinger to re-find his best game after a particularly disappointing season. And with his trade protection now in effect, the Stars don’t really have an alternative if Oettinger can’t get back to his best self. Ask the Oilers how frustrating it can be to have a great team that can’t find consistent goaltending.

Tyler Myers is in a less critical position, and I still tend to think he can approximate what Ilya Lyubushkin was bringing (and at half the price) for the last couple of years. If he can’t, though, the Stars don’t have Alex Petrovic to recall anymore. That means the next RHD up would be Kyle Burroughs, probably. How do you feel about Kyle Burroughs as a starting defenseman on a team with Cup aspirations? Probably the average fan is hoping they don’t have to answer that question.

Jamie Benn is Jamie Benn. Certainly you have an opinion about Jamie Benn that no paragraph in July is going to change either way, and we’ve seen so many highs and lows of his career that you don’t need a hypothesis to picture them. If he looks a step slower this season, his playoff performance could be tough to watch. And as we mentioned at the end of last season, he’s not exactly a player you can really scratch when he might need it. That can create a predicament, especially for a team light on depth as it is.

But of all the five 35+ players on the roster, I believe Matt Duchene is the one who could affect things the most. We saw what happened last year when he was struggling with symptoms from his vestibular concussion, and we then saw what he could do when healthy and in a good spot. Duchene is signed for three more years at $4.5 million, which is a bargain when he’s producing like he can.

The most worrying thing about Duchene, for me, was how uncomfortable he looked on the wing last year. I’d always kind of expected him to make a Pavelski-like transition to wing at some point in the four-year deal he signed, but his inability to make it work last year gives me pause. Yes, he wound up being a critical center when the Stars needed him most, but the Stars might need scoring wingers even more than centers in the near future. If Duchene can’t help with that situation and he loses a step in the back half of his thirties, I’m not sure how much value he’ll be able to retain down the middle.

Moving onto the other guys at the top of the lineup, I remain pretty optimistic about the blue line (though not quite as much as I’d be if that blue line included the reigning Norris Trophy winner). Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell are wonderfully complementary players, and Nils Lundkvist showed last year how much value he can bring at a bargain of a deal. Lian Bichsel is entering the final year of his ELC, and remains the youngest player on the roster, barring a training camp surprise.

Thomas Harley remains the point of my concern, and I wonder if the attempted Werenski trade revealed some of the Stars’ own concerns, too. That’s not to say that you don’t trade Harley for Werenski every time on a pure talent-for-talent basis, but I have to wonder if the Stars have some lingering questions about Harley’s up-and-down season last year. If he can’t carve out his own role behind Heiskanen, then how can Harley bring a value equivalent to his $10 million cap hit?

I’m still betting on Harley, because he’s simply shown too much too early in his career not to be a smart bet. But on the deal he’s now on, Harley is no longer a luxury; he has to be a lynchpin. If he can’t drive a dangerous defense pairing, it will be hard for him (and his team) to fight off some frustration.

As for the forward group, what else is there to say? The power play carried the team for long stretches last year, and despite 45-goal seasons from two players, their 5v5 production was smack-dab in the middle of the pack at 16th. The Columbus Blue Jackets scored more 5v5 goals than the Stars did, last season.

That’s kind of what we worried could happen when the team with the 6th-best 5v5 offense lost Marchment, Granlund, and Dadonov last offseason. Robertson absolutely carried this team at 5v5 last season, where he scored 25 times—nine more than any other Stars player. But it was a top-heavy offense indeed, and those tend to fall a bit more easily than ones with deeper foundations.

Justin Hryckowian could hit a sophomore slump as more pressure lands on his shoulders and the league scouts him more heavily. Wyatt Johnston and Mikko Rantanen, for all their superstar production, showed that they can be contained in crunch time when the chips are down (at even-strength, at least). The Stars’ assemblage of fourth-liners don’t look likely to generate much more surplus production than they did last year, which is more of a problem than it might have been three years ago. At a team level, the Stars profile as a group that needs to do what they did last year, relying less on overwhelming force than on strategic bunkering, striking when the iron is hot and biding their time otherwise.

Glen Gulutzan told the media after the season ended that they’d considered some neutral zone changes, so we’ll see if those come to fruition in September. If you’re the Stars, you kind of have to make some changes, if only to ensure that you reach whatever this group’s true ceiling is. With the top end of their lineup, this roster still profiles as a team that could win any game on any given night, and I’d still take them to win four of seven against 90%² of the teams in the league.

The weird thing about searching for this team’s floor is that you keep running up against how high its ceiling can really be. Any team is capable of bottoming out in any given season, and by rights, the Stars probably should have been the team in the West to do that last year, when everybody and their uncle got injured. Instead, Gulutzan’s group found a way to rip 112 points from their opponents, and they came within an eyelash of taking a 3-1 series lead over Minnesota.

Still, we have to acknowledge the reality that if the Stars struggle to start the year, more than one domino could fall. Jason Robertson’s contract status means that if the Stars are not looking like a cup contender when the calendar flips over, the Stars would have to seriously consider selling him to the highest bidder if they can’t find a number that both sides are willing to extend with. Every player in that locker room will be aware of the specter of losing one of their best players hanging over the team.

So if things are rocky to start the year, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they could be compounded. If some age-related decline affects some key players, that could combine with the misfortune of injuries to create a level of unrest that this locker room has steadfastly refused to tolerate. Even the best of teams has a breaking point, and this would be the first season in a long while where the Stars would have to seriously consider punting on the year if things aren’t lining up. And coming back from such a re-tool is always more easily said than done—especially with a Stars roster that doesn’t really have many players on it that are eligible to be moved and who would command any sort of significant return.

That’s where the just-abouts of Nill’s attempted trades this summer could wind up haunting the team for years to come. Because if the Stars can’t capitalize on the current window, it’s hard to see them finding a way to extend it more effectively than the combination of those two deals could have done. Selling from a position of strength tends to elicit a far better return than doing so out of desperation.

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If you want to be pessimistic about the Stars, you have ample opportunity to do so, as illustrated above (and at times last season). But the other side of the coin is that these Stars simply have too much talent—both drafted and otherwise acquired—not to remain a force. The Maple Leafs may have gone from 108 points to 78 after losing Mitch Marner, but that was also a team without a functional goaltender or anything approximating a high-quality blue line.

As much as we’ve spent the last 2,000 words searching for every bit of looming disaster on the roster, it’s hard not to run up against the fact that a team as good as the Stars usually won’t go gently into that good night until overwhelming amounts of disaster arrive. And if last year didn’t qualify as significantly disastrous, maybe you would have been better off not thinking too terribly hard about what such a disaster might have to look like. Sorry about that.

1. Not fun

2. That other 10% or so? Colorado, Florida, Carolina, or Tampa Bay, maybe not so much.