Related to this Faksa and Bastian but also in general- if the Stars are this amazing model for draft and development but seem to be boxing out the guys pushing for roster spots by signing contracts like this- then it feels like a disconnect and something that’s a bit fiscally irresponsible. Blumel already left because he didn’t get a shot at more games and didn’t think he would this season(rip to his chances in Boston too after all THOSE signings). Bourque and Back look like they won’t really get much of a chance to EARN a bigger role. Hyry and Hryckowian would also theoretically be pushing for NHL spots this camp. I understand all of those guys are under team control for years to come and it’s different than Blumel but at some point signing older players for 2x the money of younger guys (or the same in the case of Blackwell and bastian)is going to add up to cap issues and a lack of nhl ready talent that management believes in and that believes in management.
It would be weird and probably very bad to think the stars would play all four of those guys in regular positions this summer but it still feels like a rigged Tetris game to look at the current roster and the prospects and try to see how it all makes sense.
I tend to see Bourque playing a lot of third-line minutes this year, with the potential to scale up to the second line if Seguin misses time. But of course everything depends on where Wyatt Johnston plays. Which, hey, someone should write about that.
To be honest, I don't think they're blocking anyone crucial right now. Bastian and Blackwell are both on league-minimum deals, with the 25-year-old Bäck just a tick above that. You can scratch any of them without a fuss if someone is tearing it up in Texas and shows they can displace them.
The Bastian signing, for example, seems like it's designed to give them depth and some forechecking presence more than because they think he's better than Justin Hryckowian or anything like that. It's a tricky thing to make room for second-tier prospects (a term I'm using as a mild compliment here for players without the first-round pick pedigree), because what if you don't sign players in order to give Hyry or Hyrckowian room, and then they can't hack it in regular NHL duty? Nill has pretty consistently opted to have good players ahead of those sorts of guys, with the plan to make room when players are ready for regular NHL duty (like Bichsel and Bourque last year), whether that's mid-season or in the summer.
I am beginning to wonder if the Matěj Blümel ship sailed last year before the season ended, given DeBoer's clear preference for other players (like Bäck). But that's just a guess.
On the DLLS Stars podcast, Sam Nestler mentioned that Blumel was visibly and openly frustrated with the parent club during the season. It doesn’t sound like there was ever much of a possibility that Blumel would re-sign in Dallas. It sounds like it was just time for somewhere new.
Good stuff, but still a BAD contract. Faksa is a $1M player at this stage in his career, not $2M and certainly not for 3 years! I'm totally on board that this team needs to be better defensively (boy those are some scary team stats) and Faksa should help but I really think they could have found someone else on a 1 year deal that would have been pretty flipping close to what we'll get from him. You talk about Back in the article and that perhaps he wasn't / isn't the solution. That's fine, throw him aside and insert another kid at $1M. In her comment below, Ash talks about boxing out the guys in Austin. She's totally on point.
While offense isn't what he was brought in for, let's at least touch on it since you point out that Steel is going to make $2,1 over the next 2 years despite scoring fewer goals over their careers. But, I don't care about the career at this point. Last year (recency bias) Steel had 25 points to Faksa 15. You also state that, "As for Oskar Bäck, the fact is that his lack of offensive contributions nearly cancel out his defensive solidity to a far greater extent than Faksa". How so? Back had 16 points to Faksa 15, how is Faksa better to a "far greater extent" in that regard?
Bottom line, Faksa on the fourth line will be just fine if not better than just fine. However, the team is absolutely going to need the $1M excess cap space that he's eating and there is the rub and that rub is going to create a sore spot for 3 freaking years!!!
I genuinely love comments like these, because I think they provide healthy tension that gets us to a more intelligent place. Just wanted to say that up front.
Faksa might be closer to a $1 million player, but with the cap going up and his minutes and defensive contributions, I can see how he was able to negotiate the higher number. He's making less than Cody Glass and Brandon Tanev, who both had only 22 points last year. It's not an outlandish overpay by any stretch, especially if you value his exceptional defensive aptitude. But I'm willing to agree that the Stars might have overpaid by a few hundred thousand bucks, at least according to what I personally would have seen as a better-value contract.
I think it's worth pointing out the environments both played in. St. Louis was a defensively oriented team with far less talent and scoring depth, whereas Steel played on a team where Dadonov scored 20 goals, and where he was charged with creating offense even as a fourth-line guy. If you swapped those players' teams last year, I think it's fair to wonder if the points totals might similarly change, especially given that 10 of Steel's 25 points were secondary assists.
As for Bäck, I should have clarified a bit more on what I meant by "offense": I was talking about his offensive creation as a whole, including his shot and passing ability, not just raw points. HockeyViz, for instance, has Bäck as a -3.6 offensive guy, whereas Faksa was just -0.4 relative to league-average. You can read more about Micah's offensive rating here (https://hockeyviz.com/howto/isolate), but again, the career numbers bear out what we also saw pretty clearly: Faksa has been able to generate some modest but consistent offense in his career that Bäck, at 25, hasn't really ever shown, at *any* level. And when you adjust for team quality last year, I think it's fair to value Faksa's offense more highly. But again, nobody is saying Faksa is an offensive weapon in anything more than a residual sense.
I can't speak to whatever sore spot a $2 million contract might give you, especially with the cap continuing to rise. They'll have about a million in space to start the year if they go 13F/7D, and that should be fine. As for next season, well, let's just wait and see about Robertson and Harley. But Faksa's contract won't be the one that causes them not to be able to retain either player (and I know you're not saying that). Cheers!
I do think that the Stars missed Faksa last season. I'm going strictly by the eye test and from what I mremeber of his time here in Dallas before last season; I don't know what the most recent analytics are one way or the other beyond what is in Robert's article.
I think they missed just how good he was in the Dzone, and my eyes saw it too. But it’s also important to note the stars go continually worse in their own end under DeBoer, so it’s a mix of heiskanens injury not having Faksa and overall schematic shortcomings
Not enough was mentioned about how Faksa is part of the solution regarding their huge need for more physicality. Faksa can out-muscle 90% of the NHL. He plays a completely different game than our bottom-6 last year. Radek threw 4x as many hits as Oskar Back in roughly the same number of minutes, blocked twice as many shots, and was 5% higher in face-off wins.
I grew up in St. Louis and our family were all Blues fans (and rink rats), until I turned coat (when Mike Keenan methodically ruined that organization) and moved to DFW and forged a new allegiance. My brother is still a die-hard Blues fan and he was quite disappointed the Blues did not re-sign Faksa, as he considered him a real difference-maker on that team last year. For the Stars, not enough goal scorers was not our problem last year. Physicality and defense were problems. Radek does not have to be a goal scorer to make a real difference on the Stars, because he addresses the real problems.
Ultimately, I care less about how a player goes about their business than the results. If someone is tilting the ice the right direction, then it’s a good thing, however they do it.
But…Gulutzan has made it clear he sees more meat on the bone when it comes to utilizing hits on the forecheck (see Sean’s great piece on that earlier this week), so maybe you’re right. As always, if they can add this element to their game without sacrificing what they already do well, it will only make them better. Time will tell!
Besides Faksa’s defensive prowess, what I noticed so often was his 4th line spent so much time in the offensive zone. Pretty good for your 4th line. His line had a lot of scoring chances and if he was a better scorer he would have had quite a few goals. But hey, the opponent wasn’t scoring during that time.
Related to this Faksa and Bastian but also in general- if the Stars are this amazing model for draft and development but seem to be boxing out the guys pushing for roster spots by signing contracts like this- then it feels like a disconnect and something that’s a bit fiscally irresponsible. Blumel already left because he didn’t get a shot at more games and didn’t think he would this season(rip to his chances in Boston too after all THOSE signings). Bourque and Back look like they won’t really get much of a chance to EARN a bigger role. Hyry and Hryckowian would also theoretically be pushing for NHL spots this camp. I understand all of those guys are under team control for years to come and it’s different than Blumel but at some point signing older players for 2x the money of younger guys (or the same in the case of Blackwell and bastian)is going to add up to cap issues and a lack of nhl ready talent that management believes in and that believes in management.
It would be weird and probably very bad to think the stars would play all four of those guys in regular positions this summer but it still feels like a rigged Tetris game to look at the current roster and the prospects and try to see how it all makes sense.
I wonder what their plans are for Bourque. I could see him going-in for Duchene in certain situations.
I tend to see Bourque playing a lot of third-line minutes this year, with the potential to scale up to the second line if Seguin misses time. But of course everything depends on where Wyatt Johnston plays. Which, hey, someone should write about that.
To be honest, I don't think they're blocking anyone crucial right now. Bastian and Blackwell are both on league-minimum deals, with the 25-year-old Bäck just a tick above that. You can scratch any of them without a fuss if someone is tearing it up in Texas and shows they can displace them.
The Bastian signing, for example, seems like it's designed to give them depth and some forechecking presence more than because they think he's better than Justin Hryckowian or anything like that. It's a tricky thing to make room for second-tier prospects (a term I'm using as a mild compliment here for players without the first-round pick pedigree), because what if you don't sign players in order to give Hyry or Hyrckowian room, and then they can't hack it in regular NHL duty? Nill has pretty consistently opted to have good players ahead of those sorts of guys, with the plan to make room when players are ready for regular NHL duty (like Bichsel and Bourque last year), whether that's mid-season or in the summer.
I am beginning to wonder if the Matěj Blümel ship sailed last year before the season ended, given DeBoer's clear preference for other players (like Bäck). But that's just a guess.
On the DLLS Stars podcast, Sam Nestler mentioned that Blumel was visibly and openly frustrated with the parent club during the season. It doesn’t sound like there was ever much of a possibility that Blumel would re-sign in Dallas. It sounds like it was just time for somewhere new.
Good stuff, but still a BAD contract. Faksa is a $1M player at this stage in his career, not $2M and certainly not for 3 years! I'm totally on board that this team needs to be better defensively (boy those are some scary team stats) and Faksa should help but I really think they could have found someone else on a 1 year deal that would have been pretty flipping close to what we'll get from him. You talk about Back in the article and that perhaps he wasn't / isn't the solution. That's fine, throw him aside and insert another kid at $1M. In her comment below, Ash talks about boxing out the guys in Austin. She's totally on point.
While offense isn't what he was brought in for, let's at least touch on it since you point out that Steel is going to make $2,1 over the next 2 years despite scoring fewer goals over their careers. But, I don't care about the career at this point. Last year (recency bias) Steel had 25 points to Faksa 15. You also state that, "As for Oskar Bäck, the fact is that his lack of offensive contributions nearly cancel out his defensive solidity to a far greater extent than Faksa". How so? Back had 16 points to Faksa 15, how is Faksa better to a "far greater extent" in that regard?
Bottom line, Faksa on the fourth line will be just fine if not better than just fine. However, the team is absolutely going to need the $1M excess cap space that he's eating and there is the rub and that rub is going to create a sore spot for 3 freaking years!!!
BAD CONTRACT! Now, back to work.
I genuinely love comments like these, because I think they provide healthy tension that gets us to a more intelligent place. Just wanted to say that up front.
Faksa might be closer to a $1 million player, but with the cap going up and his minutes and defensive contributions, I can see how he was able to negotiate the higher number. He's making less than Cody Glass and Brandon Tanev, who both had only 22 points last year. It's not an outlandish overpay by any stretch, especially if you value his exceptional defensive aptitude. But I'm willing to agree that the Stars might have overpaid by a few hundred thousand bucks, at least according to what I personally would have seen as a better-value contract.
I think it's worth pointing out the environments both played in. St. Louis was a defensively oriented team with far less talent and scoring depth, whereas Steel played on a team where Dadonov scored 20 goals, and where he was charged with creating offense even as a fourth-line guy. If you swapped those players' teams last year, I think it's fair to wonder if the points totals might similarly change, especially given that 10 of Steel's 25 points were secondary assists.
As for Bäck, I should have clarified a bit more on what I meant by "offense": I was talking about his offensive creation as a whole, including his shot and passing ability, not just raw points. HockeyViz, for instance, has Bäck as a -3.6 offensive guy, whereas Faksa was just -0.4 relative to league-average. You can read more about Micah's offensive rating here (https://hockeyviz.com/howto/isolate), but again, the career numbers bear out what we also saw pretty clearly: Faksa has been able to generate some modest but consistent offense in his career that Bäck, at 25, hasn't really ever shown, at *any* level. And when you adjust for team quality last year, I think it's fair to value Faksa's offense more highly. But again, nobody is saying Faksa is an offensive weapon in anything more than a residual sense.
I can't speak to whatever sore spot a $2 million contract might give you, especially with the cap continuing to rise. They'll have about a million in space to start the year if they go 13F/7D, and that should be fine. As for next season, well, let's just wait and see about Robertson and Harley. But Faksa's contract won't be the one that causes them not to be able to retain either player (and I know you're not saying that). Cheers!
I do think that the Stars missed Faksa last season. I'm going strictly by the eye test and from what I mremeber of his time here in Dallas before last season; I don't know what the most recent analytics are one way or the other beyond what is in Robert's article.
I think they missed just how good he was in the Dzone, and my eyes saw it too. But it’s also important to note the stars go continually worse in their own end under DeBoer, so it’s a mix of heiskanens injury not having Faksa and overall schematic shortcomings
Not enough was mentioned about how Faksa is part of the solution regarding their huge need for more physicality. Faksa can out-muscle 90% of the NHL. He plays a completely different game than our bottom-6 last year. Radek threw 4x as many hits as Oskar Back in roughly the same number of minutes, blocked twice as many shots, and was 5% higher in face-off wins.
I grew up in St. Louis and our family were all Blues fans (and rink rats), until I turned coat (when Mike Keenan methodically ruined that organization) and moved to DFW and forged a new allegiance. My brother is still a die-hard Blues fan and he was quite disappointed the Blues did not re-sign Faksa, as he considered him a real difference-maker on that team last year. For the Stars, not enough goal scorers was not our problem last year. Physicality and defense were problems. Radek does not have to be a goal scorer to make a real difference on the Stars, because he addresses the real problems.
Ultimately, I care less about how a player goes about their business than the results. If someone is tilting the ice the right direction, then it’s a good thing, however they do it.
But…Gulutzan has made it clear he sees more meat on the bone when it comes to utilizing hits on the forecheck (see Sean’s great piece on that earlier this week), so maybe you’re right. As always, if they can add this element to their game without sacrificing what they already do well, it will only make them better. Time will tell!
Besides Faksa’s defensive prowess, what I noticed so often was his 4th line spent so much time in the offensive zone. Pretty good for your 4th line. His line had a lot of scoring chances and if he was a better scorer he would have had quite a few goals. But hey, the opponent wasn’t scoring during that time.