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Dallas Stars Daily Links: The Stars Work On Their After-Action To-Do List

Posted on by Kathleen Tibbetts

As NHL teams wrestle with the COVID-era challenges facing them, Free Agency 2020 promises to be a uniquely fraught time. But GM Jim Nill and the Dallas Stars plan to approach the issues in the methodical way they approach pretty much everything.

One of the first items on Nill’s to-do list is settling Rick Bowness’ future with the organization. A meeting to discuss making Bowness’ interim status permanent was delayed for all the best reasons – but Nill hasn’t changed his mind about keeping Bowness as bench boss, reports Stars senior staff writer Mike Heika:

In regards to Bowness returning, Nill has been clear that he made his mind up in the playoffs. The 65-year-old coach has been mostly an assistant in his long career, but he returned to being a head coach for the first time since 2004 and had a great experience this year. Bowness said he would take time after the season to make his decision, and Nill said the two will probably meet soon.

“I’m very comfortable with Rick Bowness being our coach,” Nill said Thursday. “These are his players now. That’s the type of relationship he has, and as far as I know, he wants to come back, and we’ll move forward with that.”

As for roster decisions, Nill believes that most of what the team may need already exists within the organization:

“Something that’s forgotten in all of this is we started 1-7-1, but after that we had one of the best records in the NHL,” Nill said. “If you look at our record from November to February, our record was as good as anybody in the NHL. So this wasn’t a one-and-done situation – we had a good team.”

Because of that, Nill sees this being a good team with minimum changes going forward. Bring back a coaching staff that learned a lot about itself and installed important changes to spark some goal-scoring after the pause. Rely on a group of defensemen that tallied 67 points in 27 playoff games – the second most in NHL history. And allow a veteran forward group led by Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Joe Pavelski and Blake Comeau to get a boost from a young group that includes [Roope] Hintz, [Denis] Gurianov, [Joel] Kiviranta, [Nick] Caamano, [Jason] Robertson and [Ty] Dellandrea.

There’s more at Mike’s place. [Dallas Stars]

Stars Stuff

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Around The Leagues

A flat cap, a revenue gap, and a lot of uncertainty: Welcome to free agency during  the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Finally

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Talking Points