NHL analysis

Major Additions: None

Major Subtractions: Darryl Sydor, Eric Lindros

Analysis

I expected the Stars to be significantly more active in the free agent market this summer. While the Stars boast among the strongest goaltending tandems in the league and a very impressive blueline (Philippe Boucher is third on their defensive depth chart), they also lack scoring up front and did nothing to fix that lack.

The good news is that Dallas has plenty of cap space to work with this year, but with nearly all of the big name UFA’s already signed there’s little they can do to improve themselves without parting with their own assets. Dallas should be expected to have trouble filling the opposition’s net once again, and that spells trouble. This is the team that couldn’t score enough goals to get past the Canucks in the playoffs last season.

Dallas looks like a pretty solid lock to make the playoffs but it’s difficult to see them making much noise once they get there. They would need to add more than one top six forward and have them integrate themselves into the team all but instantly. Not likely.

Key players for Dallas: Mike Modano, Marty Turco, Brenden Morrow

Key players for Vancouver: Roberto Luongo, Markus Naslund, Kevin Bieksa

Analysis: Well, it’s the playoffs, otherwise known as that time of year when Turco takes his perennial nose-dive.  Just to make sure there’s enough pressure on the $5.7 million goaltender, across the rink from him will be the potential Hart and Vezina trophy winner.

Dallas has done pretty well this year with an oft-decimated roster, but they don’t have to mustard to compete with the Canucks.  Vancouver has been absolutely stunning once they got their act together around December, and Luongo looks absolutely driven.  He knows he has plenty to prove and he looks focused and ready.  I wouldn’t want to bet against him.  If he gets the help he needs - Naslund, are you listening? - Vancouver will be almost unbeatable.

This won’t be an exciting series to watch but it could be an important one.  If Turco surprises us all and outplays Luongo, Dallas could become the dark horse team to watch.  If the series goes as expected, Luongo will probably become the key focus of the Western Conference playoff race.

Prediction: Vancouver in five

Canada.com:

Minnesota is the one team that scares you. They’ve got [Marian] Gaborik, who’s a game-breaker, they’ve played some of the best hockey in the league lately and they’re better than they’ve ever been, even the year they went three rounds [’03 again].

He makes some very good points throughout the article. Anaheim looks frightening but they really lack depth. Imagine Anaheim without Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger or Teemu Selanne. Of course, any team that loses a guy of that caliber would suffer, but the Ducks are probably the most top-heavy team in the league. Their young players have been excellent but do you want to rely on them in the playoffs?

I still like Nashville, though they haven’t adjusted to Peter Forsberg’s arrival as quickly as I would have liked. They remind me of Carolina last season - three very deep scoring lines, big up the middle, with a blueline stuffed with some underrated and very solid guys. I also like them because they have a number of players - Paul Kariya and Steve Sullivan come to mind - for whom this year might be their best chance. They don’t want to waste that. They’ll be hungry.

Side question: if you’re Dallas, how worried are you about Marty Turco? His playoff performance has been terrible so far and he’s set to eat up a hefty $5.7 million for another three years. How many more chances can you afford to give him if he can’t break out of his playoff funk?

This entry could also be titled “Teams To Watch Out For.”

Early in the season, as usual, some teams are surprising everyone with their speed - or lack thereof - out of the gate.  Here are a few notes about a few of the surprising teams, and about teams that should become surprising in the near future.

Buffalo Sabres: Due for a slip-up anytime now.  Just don’t tell that to the Philadelphia Flyers, who got hammered 9-1 tonight.  The Sabres have had a very easy scheudle so far but that looks to change soon enough.  While it is still very early for stats to tell us much, the Sabres are the team that is overachieving the most so far, based on their schedule difficulty (past and future) and their success.

Detroit Red Wings: Add the goals the Wings have scored to the shots they’ve taken, take away the shots they’ve allowed and the goals they’ve allowed, and you get a whopping 81, or 16.2 per game.  Even when they’re losing, they’re outplaying their opponents.  They deserve to be doing better than they are (at least until Hasek hurts his groin).

Pittsburgh Penguins: The opposite end of the spectrum.  The same calculations as with Detroit yields an average of minus-15.25.  Ouch.  How long can Marc-Andre Fleury hold this team together?  And no, Evgeni Malkin is not the answer.  Still too many question marks on this team for them to seriously challenge for a playoff position.

Phoenix Coyotes: More bad news for Gretzky and Company.  Assuming every team maintained their current winning percentage, the Coyotes have the most difficult remaining schedule.  Tough break.

Dallas Stars: Here’s a scary one for Pacific Division rivals: The Stars are statistically underperforming so far.  Their first 5 games have been more difficult than the remaining 77 are expected to be.  Yikes.  My money’s still on the Sharks for the division title though.

Continuing my early look at the NHL season, this time with the

Top Three
An easy three choices, with the Dallas Stars, Minnesota Wild and Buffalo Sabres all sporting five straight victories.

Dallas Stars
The Dallas Stars made the dubious decision to strip the captain’s ‘C’ from Mike Modano, passing to newly re-signed Brendan Morrow. I say dubious because even if Morrow is the best leader on the team, taking the C away from Modano is an insult and an embarassment, and Modano deserves better. If Morrow truly was the better leader, he wouldn’t need the C on his jersey to do so. On the plus side, the Stars still sport Marty Turco, Sergei Zubov and the majority of the team that finished 2nd last year in the Western Conference. Underachieving Bill Guerin was bought-out (no response from the Stars so far, so it doesn’t look like they’ll be paying me $2 million to not play for them this year), replaced by injury-prone Eric Lindros. The move thus far seems to have paid off, as Lindros is leading the team in points and has looked good playing on Modano’s wing. Oh, and Jussi Jokinen had the shootout winner last night. Surprise surprise.

Regular season success, of course, means little to Dallas, given their recent playoff implosions. The real test for the Stars doesn’t come until April (although I for one am curious to see if they can stay ahead of the vastly improved Ducks and Sharks in the standings).

Minnesota Wild
The success of the Wild makes me happy. Fewer franchices are as deserving as Minnesota for playoff hockey, and it looks like this year could be the year. The addition of Pavol Demitra and the resigning of Marian Gaborik has benefited the team a great deal. Manny Fernandez has not faltered in the least under the pressure of being the sole and undisputed starter. The injury to defenceman Pascal Dupuis won’t help, but having early games with players out of the lineup generally helps teams to build character and the Wild are a very strong team’s team. They wouldn’t fall apart due to any single player’s absence.

The Division is very, very tough, quite possibly the best in the league, and the Wild will have a difficult season. But they’ll also ensure that the teams they face have the same problem.

Buffalo Sabres
A team with a mission. The Sabres are out to prove they weren’t one-hit wonders last year, and so far they’re suceeding. Miller has looked absolutely tremendous (no sophomore slump so far. He’s probably waiting for Biron to get traded before he falls apart). The Sabres don’t have a single bona-fide top line guy (several are making serious cases for themselves), but their depth through all four lines is unparalleled. They come at you in waves and don’t stop for anything.

The Sabres, like the Wild, play in a very tough division. They also have had a very easy schedule so far. The remainder of their schedule will be a much tougher test, and will give a more accurate impression of just how good this young team really is.

runner up:
Anaheim Ducks: If the Dallas-Anaheim shootout had gone the other way last night, the Ducks and Stars positions would be reversed. The strength of the Ducks is obviously the blueline, with proven stars Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer and rising star Francois Beachemin as quite probably the best top three in the league (certainly the first two are the best 1-2). Ilya Bryzgalov didn’t do himself any favours with his recent, very poor performance (why or why did I trade to get him my pool?) but Giguere has been very, very good. I’m not convinced the forwards are good enough to compete. Is the blueline good enough so that that won’t matter?

Bill Guerin, what can I say? Four goals last night, one assist. I wondered why Dallas would buy out his last year. Did they not realize that they are paying him $2.25 million to score goals for someone else?

Players in situations like Guerin are such wonderul short term additions. He has nowhere to go from up and has oh so much to prove to himself, his team and the fans. No question he had a dreadful season last year, but I would say there’s also no question he has at least a few more seasons left in his tank.

For any who don’t know, buyouts work like this: the team pays two thirds of the players salary, all in the one season (it would be over X number of seasons if the player had X years left on his contract), which counts against the cap.  If only one year remains, they can also choose to split the buyout over 2 seasons, which is why Guerin’s buyout is $2.25 for this season and next season.  To put this into perspective of the Dallas team this year, Dallas currently has about $1.9 million in space under the cap after Guerin’s buyout. They are paying Jere Lehtinen $2.77 million. They pay Philippe Boucher (their number 2 blueliner) $2.5 million. Yeah, the buyout is that big.

To give the flip side of the story, I’ll give Dallas GM Doug Armstrong the benefit of the doubt here. He must have tried shopping around Guerin and couldn’t have had much luck. He obviously would have been happy even with a late round draft pick, just so he wouldn’t have to pay that buyout.

Buyouts are an interesting new feature in the CBA and in the salary cap era NHL. It’s turning out they are one clause, at least, that really favours the players. Even if Guerin had chosen to retire, he’d still be making more than $2 million this year. And why? Because he stunk so badly last year that Dallas prefers to pay him not to play.

You know, come to think of it, I could easily have a worse NHL season than Guerin did last year. Maybe I can get Dallas to pay ME $2 million to not play for them!

Additions: Matthew Barnaby, Michael Green, Jeff Halpern, Jaroslav Modry, Patrik Stefan, Darryl Sydor, Eric Lindros

Subtractions: Jason Arnott, Bill Guerin, Johan Hedberg, Niko Kapanen, Willie Mitchell, Patrick Traverse

Analysis

Dallas needs to get its post-season record back on track. They have been a fairly dominant team in the regular season for a number of years but have not recently been able to turn that success into the 16 needed wins in the playoffs. Last season was case in point, as the Stars finished 2nd in the Western Conference but were beaten soundly by the very underdog Colorado Avalanche in the first round.

Much of their performance seems linked to starting goaltender Marty Turco. Turco seems to dissapear come playoffs time, which is a very bad thing for a goaltender making $5.7 million per season. The club didn’t help him much against the Avs, letting their opponents score key goals in the closing minutes of several games. Not the way to win playoff series.

This season, gone is Jason Arnott, fresh off a 76 point season. Arnott was probably too good to be a second line center, and his departure was hardly surprising. However, that doesn’t take the sting away. Depth wins championships (ask Brind’Amour, Weight and Staal in Carolina) and the loss of a big, skilled guy like Arnott is tough to swallow. The Stars hope to fill that hole with Eric Lindros, but the Big E’s health is a continuing concern. Last year Lindros played very well early in the season, then fooled all the critics by NOT being knocked out with a concussion. Unfortunately, it seems a torn wrist ligament keeps one out of the lineup just as much as concussion symptoms. Lindros has the size and skill but he’s just too fragile for the type of game he needs to play to be successful.

The second line was further depleted by the buying out of Bill Guerin. Now, I know buying players out is a very difficult decision, and I’m sure the management in Dallas thought long and hard about this decision. But they’re still responsable for two thirds of Guerin’s salary for the next year, which means they tie up $2.3 million each of the next two years on a guy playing somewhere else. Who is going to replace Guerin? He’ll have to be cheaper by at least $2.3 million to let the Stars break even. And I know Guerin had a disapointing season last year (40 points), but I also believe he’s got it in him to do better. And now he’ll be doing better in St. Louis.

The blueline gets a boost in experience with the re-acquisition of Darryl Sydor from the Tampa Bay Lightning. Sydor won’t log the minutes he did in his last stint with Dallas but he’s got plenty of NHL experience under his belt and can be counted upon during key times of the games.

Dallas should be a Stanley Cup contender with their lineup. However, unless Turco can show up for the playoffs, they won’t be until his contract expires. I’m not going to suggest their first round exit was entirely his fault, but he didn’t help his team very much. Winning a Stanley Cup requires that your goaltender steal a game or two when you really need it, and Turco hasn’t done that for the Stars so far. With his very impressive numbers during the regular season, that leaves management scratching their heads for a solution.

Dallas has benefitted from a weak division but that will change this year. San Jose has to be the favourites to win the Pacific this season, with two sturdy goaltenders and last year’s Maurice Richard and Art Ross trophy winners. Anaheim was within a game of the Cup finals - BEFORE adding Chris Pronger. L.A. is in a rebuilding phase, but even lowly Phoenix made some big splashes and should improve hugely since they last laced up the skates.

If history is any indication, the Stars should easily make the playoffs, but I wouldn’t bet on them beyond that.