There’s more than one way to skin a cat is one of those phrases I heard often when I was younger. As disgusting as it is to think about as an adult, it does apply to quite a few situations. One of those situations is the building of an NHL roster.
The goal is ultimately to score more goals than the opposition, but NHL teams take different routes to that end. One of the obviously critical aspects of scoring more than your opponent is the scoring level of your team’s top six forwards. The top six are generally the focal point of an offensive attack so the more goals they score the better.
So, to get an idea of how prolific the top six forwards are for each team I just found the total goals scored by the top six forwards of each team in the league to see where the Stars sit. Not too surprisingly, they sit 12th.
| Rank | Team | Goals |
| 1 | CHI | 160 |
| 2 | PIT | 155 |
| 3 | ANA | 150 |
| 4 | SJ | 150 |
| 5 | BOS | 148 |
| 6 | TOR | 147 |
| 7 | WSH | 146 |
| 8 | COL | 145 |
| 9 | TB | 143 |
| 10 | STL | 142 |
| 11 | PHI | 142 |
| 12 | DAL | 134 |
| 13 | OTT | 133 |
| 14 | CMB | 128 |
| 15 | WPG | 126 |
| 16 | MTL | 125 |
| 17 | EDM | 124 |
| 18 | CAR | 123 |
| 19 | NYI | 119 |
| 20 | LAK | 117 |
| 21 | PHX | 117 |
| 22 | NYR | 117 |
| 23 | NJ | 116 |
| 24 | DET | 114 |
| 25 | MIN | 110 |
| 26 | CGY | 109 |
| 27 | NSH | 105 |
| 28 | VAN | 94 |
| 29 | FLA | 90 |
| 30 | BUF | 85 |
This highlights the fact that the Stars are a solid offensive team. They certainly aren’t Buffalo, Florida, or Vancouver. They could use secondary scoring however. What this list doesn’t highlight is that among the top six goal scorers for the Stars are ideal bottom six forwards Ryan Garbutt, Cody Eakin, and Erik Cole. A list of the goals scored by the top six forwards in terms of time on ice is another hurdle for another time.
This does give us a good barometer of where the top offensive teams are. The area the Stars would seemingly want to aim for is about 150 goals from their top six goal scorers. That total would put them among the elite goal scoring teams in the league. Further development from Valeri Nichushkin alone would put the Stars right in the mix.
Imagine if the Stars are able to make some noise this offseason however. Adding at least one legitimate top six forward with further development from Nichushkin or Alex Chiasson or even a breakout campaign from someone in the AHL like Brett Ritchie or Curtis McKenzie pushes the Stars offense into elite territory.
They were an eighth seed for the 2014, but you don’t have to squint very hard to see this roster turning into a legitimate threat for the division in the near future. A proactive offseason could accelerate that timeline considerably.