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Stars have struggled, but goalie trade would put them in great position |
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With the NHL’s holiday break looming, league GMs are going to have a few days to appraise their playoff odds. Some, whose team occupies a lower spot in the standings, will be actively misleading themselves into thinking they’ve got a solid shot at locking up a post-season berth. But there are others who really do have a chance – with a couple notable roster changes – to turn around a sub-par start to the year and put themselves in a great competitive place come mid-April. And, for my money, anyway, the team that stands out in that latter group is the Dallas Stars.
You remember them, right? Western Conference regular-season champions last year? Winners of 50 games last year? Far and away the NHL’s most potent offence last year? That’s right, the Stars were all those things. Unfortunately for their fans, they’re also the same group that hasn’t managed to win even three games in a row this season, while posting a trio of three-game losing streaks through their first 34 games of 2016-17.
They’re also a team that has seen its production fall off by .70 goals-for-per game this year, that has allowed more goals (104) than any other franchise this season, and that has fewer road wins (4-9-4) than any Western Conference team. They’re the only team in the league that hasn’t played a single shootout game this year, and they’ve had a ravenous injury bug constantly gnawing on their lineup, sidelining veteran sniper Patrick Sharp, wingers Jiri Hudler and Ales Hemsky, defenseman Johnny Oduya and center Jason Spezza for not-insignificant stretches.
Yet having said all that, the Stars still have 33 standings points, which put them only two points behind the L.A. Kings for the West’s final wild card slot and just three points behind the Calgary Flames for the other wild card position. More importantly, they have one of the craftiest, boldest GMs in the league in Jim Nill, and a number of potential solutions for what ails them.
I’m referring first and foremost to their goaltending – a factor that was identified as a weakness time and again last year and again this summer. The duo of Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi have essentially served as a platoon, but to say neither has stepped up and grabbed the No. 1 job is putting it charitably. The less-charitable way to say it is to say both netminders have had short periods of decent play overshadowed by longer periods of awful play, as evidenced by Lehtonen’s .894 save percentage and Niemi’s .911 SP this season.
But here’s where the potential for a turnaround comes in: as we all should be aware by this point, finding a capable netminder in the modern-era NHL isn’t nearly so difficult as, say, securing help along the blueline or at center. Nill might be able to persuade Ryan Miller to leave Vancouver for what might be his last, best shot at a Stanley Cup, or perhaps he can wrangle Semyon Varlamov out of Colorado. Neither would command a huge return in any trade, but it might force Stars ownership to waive and/or buy out one of the contracts of Lehtonen or Niemi, because goodness knows the market for their services is non-existent at present. With one year remaining on both Lehtonen’s and Niemi’s contract, such a move would require the full support of team ownership, but what’s the alternative – sticking with these two through the summer of 2018, simply because they’re signed?
No, this Stars squad needs to contend right away, and a new goalie would infuse life and confidence into a lineup that has often lacked in those areas. When 11 of Dallas' 21 losses have come by two goals or more, that’s an indication a better goaltender could be of help. Same goes for their seven losses in eight overtime games this year. Surely a better option between the pipes could’ve given them a couple wins here or there, or at least pushed a contest or two to the shootout, where Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin could be confidently relied upon to do some heavy lifting.
This is not to pin all of the Stars’ struggles on their goalies. Dallas’ rejigged blueline hasn’t impressed many people, and anytime your top blueliner gets healthy-scratched the way John Klingberg did in November, you know there’s room for improvement. But you read that paragraph earlier in this column that noted how tough it is to get help on defense, right? Unless you’re a very weird reader, of course you have. So you know Nill can’t expect to address that particular need unless he’s looking at more widespread change.
And I don’t think widespread change is necessary. If the Stars can catch a break on the injury front, they’re going to be better. If they can grind out a few more overtime or shootout wins here and there, they’re going to have an improved position in the standings. And if they can go into the home stretch with a motivated netminder like Miller (who’ll be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year) or Varlamov (who still has two more seasons at $5.9-million per season, but who’ll be happy to be saved from the expansion fodder category), they’ll have every opportunity to make their early struggles seem as immaterial as the Pittsburgh Penguins did with theirs last season.
When some teams wobble, they fall apart. Dallas hasn’t been that sort of wobbler, and management can resuscitate their championship aspirations without foundational change. The one thing they can’t do, though, is continue relying on the same goaltending platoon, especially when they keep failing, and especially when there are viable alternatives.
The sooner Nill makes that move, the better off the Stars are going to be.
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