Dallas Stars Daily Links: Opening Night Roster Announced

Well, we finally know who will be suiting up on Friday night against the Golden Knights. To the consternation of many DBD readers, Julius Honka will not be among them. Mike Heika offers some positive outlook, however:

However, I understand the concept. The coaches feel Oleksiak and Johns have beaten out Honka for the top six, so then the decision comes whether they should send him back to the AHL and let him play big minutes or keep him here. Now, Klingberg did it a few years back, and he really was helped by the AHL time. However, he was coming over from Europe. Honka has 191 games in the AHL, so the Stars are taking the chance that spending time in practice and film session with assistant coach Rick Wilson is worth more than a few AHL games.

He also mentions that this will likely only last for 10-12 games, and then the team will either play him with the big boys or send him down to the AHL for some more seasoning. 10-12 games seems like a pretty short amount of time to make vast improvements from watching tape, but Hitch knows what he’s doing way more than any of us do:

They say Honka is not ready, and there were signs in training camp that he still makes too many mistakes. I would prefer to let him play through the mistakes and learn lessons on the ice, but they are going to try to teach him by letting him watch games in the pressbox and also let him learn via practice and film sessions.

It could be a good idea that ends up working.

See more over at Mike’s place. [SportsDayDFW]

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Stars News

Gemel Smith on making the Opening Night roster:

This looks like it will be some pretty good content:

Tell us how you really feel, Barry:

I’ve seen a lot of mixed opinions on this news:

Tyler Seguin doesn’t necessarily mind the comparisons to Mike Modano, but he doesn’t think they’re too accurate either. [SportsDayDFW]

Kari Lehtonen believes he is mentally prepared for his new role. [NHL]

10 Facts about Ken Hitchcock, including the fact that Brendan Morrow thinks like he sounds like the teacher from Charlie Brown. I think he sounds more like the weirdo attorney from Making A Murderer (no offense Hitch). [SportsDayDFW]

Around the League

While I have zero desire to live in Buffalo, I could probably stomach ten years of it for $80 million:

It’s prediction season! Here are a couple:

One writer at Sporting News has the Stars winning the Cup.

Down Goes Brown has our boys losing to the Oilers in the Western Conference Final, which our indefatigable Managing Editor would be okay with.

A Sports Net writer has the Stars winning it all as well.

And a video! TSN has Dallas in the WCF as well.

Several people predicted a Stars’ Cup last year as well, so as always, take those with a grain of salt.

There is a pattern developing here: Tom Wilson of the Capitals’ is suspended for the first four regular season games after being suspended for two preseason contests. [Sports Net]

Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

Various NHL players react to the return of the mulleted one, Jaromir Jagr. [Sports Net]

We won’t be seeing Real Deal Neal on the ice in Vegas for a bit:

A quick look at some final tweaks teams across the league have made recently. [The Hockey News]

In case you don’t feel like keeping up with a fantasy team all season long, here are some tips for daily play. [NHL]