Thursday Dallas Stars Update: Recalls, Rumors, and Legends

There’s a lot of Stars news to get to today, including some injuries, some recalls, and the official announcement of the Quarter-Century Team. Let’s get right into it.

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The Stars are back in Dallas after a five-game road trip. It was good to see (almost) the entire team back at morning skate today, with the exceptions of Mason Marchment, Tyler Seguin, and now Roope Hintz.

Pete DeBoer said that Hintz is “day-to-day” with the upper-body injury he suffered against Toronto. DeBoer confirmed Hintz is out tonight against Montreal, but he wouldn’t say for certain beyond that. My speculation is that the hit from Auston Matthews may have hurt one of Hintz’s shoulders, but that’s purely a guess. The good news for Stars fans is that “day-to-day” is, by definition, shorter than “week-to-week.”

Marchment, meanwhile, is still slated to return around the end of January, per Sean Shapiro’s chat with Jim Nill this week.

Hintz’s absence necessitated the recall of two players to fill out the twelve forward spots, and those two ended up being Matěj Blümel, who played in the most recent two games of the Stars’ road trip, and Justin Hryckowian, who played a couple of games earlier this year.

Both players are wingers, so it wouldn’t shock me to see the Stars do what they did partway through the game Tuesday, moving Johnston up into Hintz’s spot. Here’s a guess at tonight’s forward groups:

Robertson-Johnston-Dadonov
Benn-Duchene-Stankoven
Blümel-Bourque-Steel
Hryckowian-Bäck-Blackwell

Take those with a grain of salt until warm-ups, though. Bourque and Steel might be interchangeable, as Bourque took most of the faceoffs against Toronto. But I put Bourque on the right up there since he would be the only right-hand shot on the line, although Blümel can play right wing despite being a left shot. So it’s possible Bourque centers the line with Steel on his left and Blümel on the right…or Colin Blackwell could move up to the right side, and Steel could play on the left, and we could see a fourth line of players who all played in Cedar Park last year. Sheesh, we’ll find out in a few hours. Be patient, why don’t you?

Speaking of Blümel, he only played 4:18 on Tuesday in Toronto, and there was a report during the game that he had left the bench with a possible injury, but I spoke with Blümel this morning, and he said that he never left the bench. Blümel mentioned that he had gotten a bunch of texts from his AHL teammates asking if he was okay after that report came out, but it turns out there was nothing to be worried about.

My read on the lack of ice time for Blümel in the second half of Tuesday’s game is that, after the Stars were down to 11 forwards and getting into a situation where they were protecting a lead against a dangerous Toronto team, DeBoer did what he had done with Arttu Hyry the other night in Montreal, and simply chose not to find a way to get Blümel into a tight game. That’s the price of being the 12th forward, I suppose.

DeBoer talked about that exact situation today, in fact. Here’s what the said when asked about AHL call-ups learning to play in the NHL through nerves:

“I’m not even thinking [about production],” said DeBoer. “I’m thinking, you know, ‘let me play you 10, 12, 14 minutes tonight and feel good about it.’ That’s where we have to start with those guys. As coaches, we don’t want to have to go to the third period with a lead and sit somebody, or only play them six or seven minutes. I don’t think there’s a coach out there that wants that, but the player dictates that as you go in. Sometimes it’s not their fault, sometimes you just don’t have a long enough book on them to have that trust. It’s not training camp; we’re in the middle of the season here, and there’s critical points on the line every night. That’s the challenge.”

Blümel played eight minutes in Ottawa, without the same sort of third-period benching that happened in Toronto. I don’t think Blümel has lost DeBoer’s trust completely or anything, as the game in Toronto was a tense one even with a two-goal lead, and I think his recall today shows that the coaches still see him as one of their best options for a winger right now. I suppose we’ll see how tonight goes, though.

Hyry also suffered a similar bench-warming in Montreal, where he only had two shifts in the second period and one in the third (and those two second period shifts were probably way too long for any coach’s comfort, at over a minute apiece). Hyry wasn’t recalled today after being scratched for two games, as the Stars opted to go with Hryckowian again, so read into that what you will.

As for the other positions, Jake Oettinger will be in net tonight, and the defense projects to look the same as it did in Toronto, after Brendan Smith skated late this morning.

Speaking of the defense, Ilya Lyubushkin said he’s okay after taking a puck to the midsection in Toronto at the end of a period and heading right down the tunnel (which we did see, for sure). Lyubushkin smiled and said the puck hit him right in, ah, what I’ll call a distinct part of his anatomy, but he’s fine now. There’s a reason NHL players wear a protector, I suppose.

On the topic of protective gear, Lyubushkin (like one Mike Modano) doesn’t wear a mouthguard when he plays. Lyubushkin said he never did before, so it’s just not something he’s used to doing. It’s all about feeling comfortable when you’re one of the best hockey players in the world, as all NHLers are, by definition.

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The Dallas Stars announced their Quarter-Century Team today, and it’s a pretty great collection of players:

My initial reaction was that Klingberg should be above Heiskanen on the first team, but then I looked, and did you know Klingberg only has like 84 more games played in Dallas than Heiskanen, already? I would not have guessed they were that close, but then, Klingberg only ever played 82 games once, in his 2017-18 All-Star campaign, missing a few games in every other season before Heiskanen’s arrival. And when you look at playoff games, obviously Heiskanen has a couple of deep runs in the last two years that Klingberg doesn’t. So this is probably right, as Sergei Zubov was also all-world in the aughts, unquestionably.

Esa Lindell, by the way, is an absurd +117 in his career. That’s never the sort of number I cite for any serious analysis, but it does tell a story, and that story jives with who Lindell has become: a cornerstone of the Stars’ defense. Deserved recognition, absolutely.

The goaltending selections are a more interesting question. Marty Turco is a lock for the first team, as he should be, given how he revolutionzed the position with the Turco Grip and set the modern goals-against record in 2002-03 with a preposterous 1.72 GAA, which should still be the record in every reasonable person’s judgment, given how Turco set that record in 2002-03 while playing 55 games, only for Miikka Kiprusoff to “break” it after he put up a 1.70 GAA the following year while playing just 38 games, in a season so riddled with holding and hooking that they canceled the following year just to ensure a travesty like that fake GAA record by the Calgary goalender never happened again, probably.

Seriously though, Turco played 17 more games that year than Kiprusoff in the 03-04 season, as Miikka didn’t even play half of his team’s regular-season contests. And to add insult to injury, Turco was completely jobbed out of a Vezina Trophy in that record-setting 2002-03 season because Martin Brodeur had more wins, and of course, the Very Brilliant GMs of the NHL decided that meant he was the better goalie. Seriously, it’s a marvel Turco is still as good-natured a guy as he is, given how much more recognition he deserves than what he ever got.

Also, Turco (with some New Jersey bum’s help) caused the horrible trapezoid to be put in by those same ignorant GMs who were scared by his excellent stickhandling. Give him trophies of any kind, I don’t care if they’re for bowling, swimming, or basket weaving. He deserves more accolades.

As for Ed Belfour, he did bring the Stars to that second Cup Final against New Jersey, if you count the 1999-00 season as part of that Quarter-Century Team (which I personally wouldn’t, but the NHL decided to count all games after January 1, 2000 for whatever reason). Belfour’s next (and last) two seasons in Dallas were his worst with the team, so his appearance on this list feels more of a celebration of what he was in that half season after 1/1/00 than what he did afterwards.

I was speculating about this Quarter-Century team with someone a month or two ago, and I mentioned Kari Lehtonen as a name that probably deserved consideration, given how he spent almost a decade in Dallas with some very good numbers (445 games played, with a .912 Sv%) on some defensively-suspect teams before his post-concussion decline, but his playoff collapse that probably soured anyone on putting him on this list to begin with, and his failure to prop up the 2017-18 team after Ben Bishop’s injury-riddled season probably cemented his legacy in a less-than-positive way.

Sean pointed out this afternoon on Twitter that Ben Bishop might have the edge over any non-Turco goalie, and I think I probably agree with that, given how elite Bishop was in that 2018-19 run and when he was healthy in the regular season. You would get into a debate about peak vs. longevity when it comes to Bishop and Lehtonen, but I think I’d have voted for either of these players over Belfour, with Bishop’s peak obviously being higher than Lehtonen’s, albeit shorter.

As for the forwards, Brad Richards was extremely good during his few years in Dallas, including a 91-point season on a mediocre 2010-11 Stars roster and a point-per-game performance through four seasons without ever making the playoffs. But Joe Pavelski was actually in Dallas for a season longer, and who would even think of taking Pavelski off this list, anyway? No objections to the eight forwards chosen here.

The only other players that really jumped out at me were Alex Goligoski or Trevor Daley, who probably deserve honorable mentions for essentially doing yeoman’s work and playing a bit outside of the idea situation for each of them, with Daley sometimes playing more defensive-defenseman roles for the bulk of his earlier years before tearing it up with his skating and skill after Lindy Ruff arrived, and with Goligoski playing as a number-one, puck-moving defenseman for years until John Klingberg’s arrival in 2014. (By the way, check out this piece on Goligoski’s culinary skills, if you haven’t. It’s a fun time.)