Sure, Jim Nill may have won the offseason. But is it enough? Or will it be like 2014-15 when everything on paper crumbled to dust in the face of a Lindback-led gust?
Robert and David break down everything you need to know about which Cedar Park prospect can out-Pitlick Pitlick, which of David and Robert is the real scoundrel, and how Bart’s elephant is not a metaphor for Nemeth and Oleksiak.
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Alexander Radulov
Robert: Is Radulov everything he’s cracked up to be, or this just a too-expensive stopgap?
David: We can all agree that Radulov is a win short term. Some of us, Montreal fans mostly, are worried he’s a flight risk. Cretins think his divorce is some sort of x-factor. But I’ll be the voice of quixoticity and call this a win long term. Outside of Valeri Nichushkin, and Denis Gurianov, Dallas doesn’t have any impact forwards that can play right wing. Even Nichushkin and Gurianov don’t project to be 50-point wingers this early, if ever. Especially if Nuke keeps getting knocked out in Russian prizefights.
Robert: It’s an interesting way to look at it. In my thinking, when it comes to free agency, short-term wins are the only sort there are. For Nill to get Radulov for “only” five years (especially after Oshie’s albatross deal) is as big a victory as free agency had to offer this year. And with a majority of GMs around the league too fearful to start making significant trades–how has no one overpaid for Duchene yet?–the Stars had to use their enormous chunk of cap space to get better, and they did. Radulov is a great right winger, which the Stars needed desperately. Filling holes in free agency with quality players is not easy to do, and that’s what the Stars did. Yes, this deal will probably feel like an overpay for the last couple of years, but that’s the nature of the beast–and the Stars got themselves one fantastic beast, all things considered.
Martin Hanzal! Wait. Martin Hanzal? Is he so hot right now?
David: Yes he is.
Martin Hanzal (Dallas) is a very strong second-liner. Lots of penalties drawn and taken. pic.twitter.com/ZEPakWmbwU
— Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) July 1, 2017
I’d like to think that Nill has some sort of inside track on the impending extinction of wingers under 6’2, and that his desire to play an all-center forward group is the secret to in-house analytics. Does he have some Qyburn-like insight? I could be wrong. I’d say it’s a sneaky good pickup. A silver bullet for Dallas’ PK woes. But it does create a few problems. Like playing Spezza at wing, as Heika has suggested. The last time Spezza played wing, it was the result of a Lindy Ruff experiment that I’m pretty sure didn’t go according to plan.
Robert: The Spezza Question is the elephant in a room full of elephantine wingers, as you say. Heika has alluded to Spezza’s dissatisfaction at being displaced from center, and you never want a productive $7 million player to be unhappy. Hanzal certainly seems to have the defensive allure that Spezza does on offense, and that would make a line with both of them great, were there spots for both.
However, if Hitch can find a way (as he seems to want) to alternately deploy them up the middle in their respective zones of strength, you can see this being an big improvement for Dallas. Ultimately, everyone will talk about faceoffs, but the real test will be to see who’s carrying the puck up the middle of the ice for Dallas and who’s defending said space in their own zone. For my money, I’d prefer to see Spezza getting plenty of chances to distribute the puck from the middle of the ice, given how badly the Stars will need to up their offense from last year. “Wait and see” is a copout, but until we know how Hitch will change the system, it’s hard to see this working out without some growing pains.
Basically, I just want Mattias Janmark to be healthy again, because he’ll probably fix everything.
Flynn. Pitlick. Is this Korpikoski and Hudler all over again or is it closer to Eaves and Cracknell?
David: I really hated these signings at first. But I’ve come around to the Pitlick signing. Mainly because I like a good story. And hitting a man so hard you rupture your spleen is certifiably metal. Still, I thought Remi Elie, Jason Dickinson, and Gemel Smith looked fine in their brief tenures. If Janmark is healthy, there’s basically just a single spot at left wing for one of them. What is Nill trying to tell them? That a 4th-line role is so sacred they need to wield the Excalibur to prove their worth? I was hoping we’d get Cedar Park goulash this season. Instead it’s looking like at least a few of them will be resigned by the onanism men of Pompeii.
Robert: I guess both can be considered right-wing veteran insurance, should the Disaster (lit. “bad star”) of Last Year return to Dallas again. And given how thin Dallas was up the right side on June 30th, I suppose I shouldn’t have been that shocked at Nill’s moves to get some non-sinister bodies signed.
Flynn is of little consequence in terms of blocking kids with higher ceilings, for my money. Any spot he wins will be, like Cracknell before him, well-earned. If the kids play as well in camp as one would expect them to, Flynn can always be stashed in Texas to start the year. But maybe I was just so numb to the signing of more depth forwards by the time I saw the Flynn acquisition that I just couldn’t muster up any more confusion. So, I’ll say it’s just a nice little bit of veteran insurance. (tl;dr, Flynn~Cracknell, so chill.)
As for Pitlick, I still see him as somewhere in between Eaves and Korpikoski (though far beneath them in terms of age, at only 25). The three-year deal was a curious one to me, but like you said, it makes sense the more I sit with it. If Pitlick hits 15 goals, suddenly he’s a really nice bargain for two more years on the cheap, and that’s not nothing. It’s sort of like you’re signing him for another ELC, but after you’ve seen his game develop a bit.
The other side of all this is, as you say, the kids. After being pleasantly surprised by the late-season contributions of Elie and Smith, suddenly they seemed (to much of the fan base) like found money. These players were never supposed to be needed on a team coming off a conference-best season, but suddenly they earned some nice moments. They’re both good stories, but Jim Nill is, like all GMs, going to take the lower ceiling of “established veterans” over the uncertain floor of younger players. I know we have more invested in the kids, but then, we also wondered if Mattias Backman could be Klingberg’s eventual partner at one time, too.
Dickinson is still very much in the team’s plans, however, and I think it’ll be good to get him another season in the AHL with (hopefully) no major injuries. The Stars hold his rights for a while yet, so as long as he’s playing big minutes, you’d think Dallas will be excited about what he can bring when other bottom-sixers get more expensive. And if he starts putting up a 2015-16 Faksa-like performance, you’d think Dallas will find a way to get him in the lineup. Thankfully, this doesn’t mean moving Cody Eakin to the top line anymore.
David: You scoundrel, you. Listen. Let’s not pretend like there’s no such thing as quality hockey in the KHL, SHL, or Liiga. UFC fans know this phenomenon well. Dana White shouts loud noises about how his fighters are the best. And then Luke Rockhold comes in from Strikeforce (labeled “Strikefarce” by MMA fans with little imagination) and wins the belt. Not that I think Backman was Drew Doughty in gangly Swedish clothing. But AHL players are better than given credit for. Just as NHL players are often worse than given credit for. Would you have taken Eakin over everyday AHL’er Justin Dowling last season? Okay, no Eakin bashing. We really do wish him well. But what say you, Robert-o?
Robert: First, I am no scoundrel. You have referenced UFC and MMA, and such love for unbridled violence is clearly more scoundrel-like (scoundrelic?) than anything I have said out loud, specifically today, on the record.
I agree with the general principle that AHLers don’t get enough credit, and I likewise agree that privileging “established” NHLers harms teams far more often than they are going to admit. But I guess I’ve just become resigned to the world of the NHL: A place where lockouts happen more often than back-to-back championships, where Colin Campbell is still in charge of a significant number of league decisions, and where good hockey players will be overlooked for worse ones because of nebulous characteristics that reinforce unsubstantiated thinking.
How awesome was the 2017 NHL Entry Draft for Dallas on a scale of 1 to Nico or Nolan?
David: Prepare your tomatoes and lettuce. The draft was a little bittersweet for me. Dallas fell just outside of Nolan or Nico territory, and the rest seemed defined by need. We need (oops; let me turn these Ludwig tags off)-Dallas needs a left handed defenseman to play next to Klingberg. Pick Heiskanen! Dallas needs a blue chip goaltender to recover from the Mike Valley era. Pick Oettinger! Keep in mind, I love these picks. But if you’re drafting for need there’s still a gaping hole for a playmaking forward in the system who isn’t the size of a small building. That’s a good sign for Honka though. Nill thought so much of his talents that it didn’t matter he won’t ever be the villain in Stallone’s Over the Top sequel.
Robert: Eh, I can’t find much to get upset about with this draft. Admittedly, I was biased towards Heiskanen from the beginning, but dynamite young defenders are pretty danged valuable in this league. I don’t know that it’s purely a need-based signing, especially with Bayreuther in the system as well. If the Stars had signed Glass, for instance, then we might well be talking in two years about how Esa Lindell plateaued as a bottom-four defender, Heatherington and Bayreuther never quite made the jump, and Dallas was forced to overpay for Brooks Orpik 2.0 or something to fill the hole. I guess I’m basically just saying that I’m confident in Dallas’s ability to find dynamic offensive players outside the draft, should they decide to value them. (Insert Derek talking about how many undersized dynamic forwards go undrafted.)
As for Oettinger, yeah, that’s not a good look for Dallas from a franchise perspective. Some of it is genuine bad luck, given how few lottery balls teams have to spend on goalies each year; but for Dallas to have produced nothing of consequence in the crease for a decade is embarrassing. I’d guess fixing the position was an organizational mandate from the top down, and so the Stars sort of forced their own hand. All teams end up paying the price of their own incompetence, eventually.
David: It’s really just nitpicking on my part. If Dallas can crystallize a blueline that’s led by Klingberg, Honka, and Heiskanen, who look as advertised, with a goaltender that can deliver on his promise, that projects to have a broader impact on the franchise success than some snazzy forwards. Still, I always preferred checkers to chess. And Nill ain’t playing the former.
Is Ken Hitchcock the key to making Dallas good defensively?
David: I like Hitchcock. He’s said all the right things. Granted, they usually do. But Hitchcock has been just a little more refreshing. Still, I worry about this magic spackle perception. Hitchcock sprinkling Vlasic dust over Oleksiak, Nemeth, and Pateryn is the kind of doe-eyed optimism that overstates what improvement means for their ceilings as everydayers. Methot with Klingberg, Lindell with Honka, Hamhuis with Johns, or whatever mixture floats your roster boat should be the official core. End of story. Sure, if somebody gets injured, you’ll need warm bodies to take over, but I’d hate to for another carousel of journeymen to disrupt the rhythm of a respectable core. And I worry more that Honka, with his mere 16 games of NHL experience, will be the whipping boy of such rotations. I’m not rooting against them, mind you. In fact, I’ll say something nice. If injuries hit the left side. Say, Crosby hacks off another Methot finger. Or Hudler transmits his weaponized toxoplasmosis to Hamhuis. I think Nemeth is the best bet to take over and force Hitchcock into making some tough decisions.
Robert: I’ve always been more of a fan of having clear delineations between your go-to players and the Other Guys. In a way, it can give more motivation for a player coming into the lineup to prove he belongs, whereas last year just felt like Oleksiak and Nemeth were channeling Snowflake and Santa’s Little Helper in “Bart Gets an Elephant”. Let the players know exactly where they stand, and leave it to them to prove you wrong. This “well, maybe they’re still great, but who’s to say, really” thing has runs its course.
As for Hitch, I’m optimistic, but I’m sure it will be less satisfying than 2015-16 was under Ruff. Growing pains are fine if they’re worth it, however, and Hitch does seem to make teams better when he arrives.
Starting Lines?
David: Denis Gurianov feels inspired by Radulov’s presence, goes superbeast mode, Hintz pulls a Janmark who is shockingly still Janmark, Pitlick knocks Shore back into Cedar Park, and Hitchcock doesn’t realize Roussel is playing on the 4th line for shockingly good depth.
Benn-Seguin-Radulov
Hintz-Hanzal-Gurianov
Janmark-Faksa-Spezza
Roussel-Pitlick-Ritchie.
Robert: Much as I’d love to have the Kids make a statement, my prediction (sans Nichushkin changing his mind) is much less exciting. (And as for your mess of a jumble up there, I’ll lead the riot if Spezza is playing 3RW.) I think Guryanov (I’ll forever choose the way Russia spells it over the NHL) is the first call-up if Janmark goes down, as Dallas would love to have Radulov and him in the same locker room. Hintz could do something later in the season, but like the kids last year, it would have to be as a result of disaster.
yes-yes-yes
Janmark-Hanzal/Spezza-Spezza/Hanzal
Roussel-Faksa-Ritchie
Shore-Cracknell-Pitlick
McKenzie, Elie
David: I’m not on Sean Shapiro’s side, but as he likes to point out, louder than his usual measured self, Gurianov is the spelling on his passport. Just saying.
Robert: Fair enough. After all, there’s no way Dallas could possibly pull another Niklas Grossman, right?