Three Big Questions about These Dallas Stars

The Stars canceled practice for today, presumably so that the players have enough time to get their hair ready for Casino Night this evening. But that doesn’t stop this ol’ coconut from ruminating (knocks a wise fist on forehead, sending glasses flying). No sir, we still have serious thinkin’ to do around these parts, and one itty bitty day off isn’t going to prevent us from sharing our vast wisdom with you, gentle reader—or in this case, our vast lack of it.

So, on a Wednesday afternoon that’s finally starting to warm up, here are three questions that still bug me, even if we don’t have the answers yet.

Question #1: What do the Stars really think they need to add to win a Stanley Cup?

This is the big one, right here. Do the Stars really want to add a scoring forward with the contract of, say, J.T. Miller, as has been rumored? He’s a year older than Seth Jones (whom we discussed the other day), and they both have five years left on their deals after this one. Miller is at $8 million per year, and Jones at $9.5 million. Either one would take a serious big of maneuvering to fit after this year, but people who Tend To Know Things have linked both players to a potential fit in Dallas, and that’s worth thinking about. I think.

Last year, the Stars’ forward group stayed largely healthy most of the year, and they got the exact player they needed at the deadline in Chris Tanev. But the scoring dried up at the worst time against Edmonton, and the Case of the Sporadically Absent Offense hasn’t been solved this season, either.

Cumulatively, the Stars’ record has been very good this year. Even the power play has been perfectly fine, on the road. But particularly in crunch-time, the Stars haven’t been able to get the goals they need to swing tight games. What player(s) do they really think they need to change that?

This question bugs me, because we won’t really know until the deadline. And even then, we may not know if the Stars got their first choice, or if they took the best they could get, rather than going into the playoffs without any help at all.

(Bonus question 1.5: if the Stars had gotten Seth Jones instead of Ryan Suter back in the summer of 2021, would that have improved their Cup prospects over the following seasons?)

Question #2: Why are the Stars 0-13-0 when trailing after two periods this year?

Last year, the Stars were among the best teams in the league at so-called comeback wins. This year, they haven’t even forced overtime when trailing after 40 minutes. That’s insane, given how good they’ve been at defense. They’ve kept teams close, and usually you’d expect to get a bounce or two somewhere in thirteen tries in order to get past 60 minutes even by accident, if not to steal the game back altogether.

This fact continues to be the most concerning one there is about this year’s team. The lack of an ability to generate a big push when they need it is pretty damning when you talk about desperation, character, emotion, and all that jazz. Playoff games are won and lost because of the ability to push through the opposing team’s structure, to force the issue when you’re desperate, and to manufacture a goal to give your team life when belief is ebbing. And for a team whose power play disappeared when they needed a push more than ever against Edmonton last spring, this question isn’t going away any time soon.

In fact, take a look at which four NHL teams have scored the most third-period goals this season, and you’ll notice some big names: Winnipeg, Vegas, Colorado, and Carolina. These are very good teams (or at least very dangerous ones, in Colorado’s case), whereas Dallas is right in the middle of the pack, at 15th. And while a little of that is because Winnipeg and Colorado have a few more empty-net goals than Dalllas, that’s only a small portion of that gap.

Now, Dallas is also 5th in the league in goals allowed in the third period, and that’s all well and good. If they get the lead in the first two periods, then hey, they’re great at locking things down. But Vegas is even better at preventing goals in the third period (2nd), which shows you don’t have to sacrifice offense to be the better team in the most important period.

If you want to construct narratives about Dallas’s fatal flaw, then that 0-13-0 stat is absolutely your starting point. But we’ll wait to do that until they actually show they can’t find this gear after 82 games rather than after 47.

Still, this question nags at me, because I suspect it nags at everyone in the organization, too. And as DeBoer admitted after the game last night, there isn’t an easy answer. You just have to build confidence in the process, and trust the result will come. What happens if it doesn’t come, though? Well, that’s a question that any NHL coach knows the answer to, all too well.

Question #3: Who will be the Stars’ top-four defensemen in the playoffs?

Last night, Pete DeBoer gave a possible playoff preview of the Stars’ strategy for their top three forward lines in the playoffs: go with Wyatt Johnston, Matt Duchene, and Roope Hintz down the middle, and give each of them the best wingers you can find.

Putting aside the fact that that strategy resulted in just one goal (and by a defenseman, no less), let’s assume Dallas does something similar on the blue line by loading up their top four defensemen, as they did last spring when they played each of their top-four defensemen (Esa Lindell, Miro Heiskanen, Thomas Harley, and Chris Tanev) for 22+ minutes per game.

Let’s be clear about something right off the bat, though: Ilya Lyubushkin has been far better than expected this year, and I was absolutely wrong about how well he would fit into this team. He’s definitely performed above expectations, even defying them on occasion. He really does look like he could be a better version of Jani Hakanpää for the next couple of years, and that’s a nice find by Jim Nill.

But with that said, we also need to acknowledge that Lyubushkin is being deployed more like a third-pairing defenseman and penalty-kill specialist than a true top-four player. Which is to say, how Hakanpää was best deployed, when he was healthy.

Here, I’ll show you what it looks like this year:

In fact, let’s make that even clearer by isolating ice time per game at just 5-on-5:

Two things here: First, that gap between Lindell and everyone else is huge. Lyubushkin has been fantastic on the penalty kill this year, but DeBoer and Alain Nasreddine have wisely deployed him more carefully at 5-on-5. He’s an trustworthy third-pairing NHL defenseman who can absorb big penalty-kill minutes, and that’s a great asset to have that the Stars didn’t last year. But that’s not the same as a true top-four option.

Second, you’ll note that Lian Bichsel, even with the Stars’ roster depleted with illness, was still fairly sheltered during his time in Dallas. And while I think his ceiling is enormously high in the future, his performance during his eight-game cameo this season doesn’t suggest that the coaches believe he’s ready to step into heavy minutes against the best teams in the NHL yet. Whether that will change before April is still in question, but I do think he’s a tantalizing option to take into the playoffs, even if it’s on a third pairing.

All told, I tend to think the Stars don’t believe they have that fourth top-four guy on the blue line yet, either in Dallas or in Cedar Park. And that’s why it’s worth spending time speculating about things even as incredibly unlikely as a Seth Jones trade: the Stars need another defenseman, and they need one whom they can roll over the boards with confidence against the best players on the other team. That would give them the ability to play Ilya Lyubushkin with, say, Lian Bichsel on the third pairing, if the rookie is ready for playoff action. And suddenly, the blue line begins to look a whole lot more impressive than it does right now.

Where you find that player is a fun discussion question, but even beginning to construct feasible trade proposals in January hurts my soul, so I try to avoid it as much as possible. But as much as the Stars surely want to bolster their scoring up front to avoid another offensive abdication at the worst time, it’s clearer to me than ever that their biggest need remains where it was last year: on the blue line. And I don’t see a clear path to filling that hole without taking either a bad contract or a questionable compromise in quality.

Thankfully, I’m not the one paid handsomely to answer those questions. But we’ll keep asking them, all the same.