Thursday Dallas Stars Roundup: Lian Bichsel's Defense Partner(s), Jake Oettinger on Roope Hintz's Fit, and What Kirill Kaprizov's Contract Means for Jason Robertson's Future

Packing too much into the last day of the offseason

PC: Roope Hintz on Instagram

If you haven’t seen it, check out some guy’s piece in D Magazine today on Lian Bichsel. I hear it’s okay.

But beyond that, I wanted to take a moment—on what feels like the last true day of the offseason—to dive a little deeper into something more niche: whom Bichsel might play next to this season.

Bichsel is a left-shot defenseman. You have heard this before, and possibly even seen it with your own eyes. Ideally, then, he’d be paired with a righty, as he was with Ilya Lyubushkin, Matt Dumba, and finally Alex Petrovic last year.

Image from HockeyViz.com (which is a good web site)

In the 2024 preseason, Bichsel played a game on a pairing with Esa Lindell, where Lindell played on the right side, which is something Lindell has a little bit here and there in his career on the odd occasion when he hasn’t been playing with righties like John Klingberg, Jani Hakanpää, Chris Tanev, Nils Lundkvist, or Cody Ceci.

But as you can see above, Bichsel also had a couple of games in the regular season where he was paired with Lindell, including the second NHL game of his career.

Other than Miro Heiskanen (who has generally played on the right side when he’s paired with Lindell), Lindell is the only lefty in this year’s primary lineup who has gotten any sort of regular duty playing on his off-side in the NHL. Much of that may be due to the unflappable nature of Lindell, who could probably lower your blood pressure while playing on a defense pair next to an out-of-tune piano. But the more you step back and take a look at things, the more I think you start to wonder about two other players: Thomas Harley and Nils Lundkvist.

Harley played one game last season primarily paired with Lindell—the final game of the California road trip in February, during which Ilya Lyubushkin got hurt. So it was, that in the final game before the Four Nations break on February 8, the wounded Stars (with Lundkivst and Heiskanen already out for the regular season) began the game with Harley playing with Cody Ceci, and Bichsel with Lindell, only to quickly blow up the defense pairings after two early goals by San Jose.

If you don’t remember, the Stars would go on to finish that game in a 8-3 rout. And they did so while rolling these amended partnerships:

Harley-Lindell
Bichsel-Dumba
Smith-Ceci

Lest one of you come at me to argue this point, here are two face-offs from the first period of that game, both with Lindell on the right side with first Bichsel and then Harley, to show that you are dumb:

First, with Bichsel (Lindell’s unmistakable form poking out from the right frame)

Next, with Harley (who doesn’t realize his vacation plans will soon be changed)

In general, the Stars have preferred to keep Harley on the left side, even if he’s more of the “playmaker” on a pairing with another lefty like Lindell, or even like he was with Joel Hanley for a bit in 2023-24. (Yeah, you forgot about that, didn’t you?)