Let’s start with the obvious: the Dallas Stars are serious contenders.
Heading into the 2023-2024 NHL season, which opens tonight against the St. Louis Blues, the Stars have been a trendy Stanley Cup Champion pick by analysts, joining the Vegas Golden Knights and the Edmonton Oilers.
But if there’s a flaw in the plan, it happens to be one of the main reasons Vegas hoisted the Cup in the spring after defeating Dallas in the conference finals. The Stars’ defensive core, at least as of today, has work to do.
Miro Heiskanen is a top-three player in the world at his position, but the rest of the defensive grouping has legitimate questions about age, health, performance, or consistency. How well those questions are answered will determine whether the Stars are a top team in the West or the top team.
It’s a huge opportunity for Nils Lundkvist and Thomas Harley, not only to take a significant step forward in their careers but to reshape this unit—and this team.
To understand the importance of the Stars’ defense, you first have to understand how the Stars’ offense works. They attack in waves, and those waves come on the rush. All four lines are built to protect the puck in transition and find seams through the early chaos of a zone entry.
The Stars aren’t built to be a zone-possession team like Vegas. They simply don’t have the player personnel to grind a team down in the offensive zone, and even players with larger physical frames—like Roope Hintz and Jamie Benn—aren’t great puck protectors low in the zone.
Dallas knows this. Pete DeBoer is willing to embrace it, too, and encourage early shots off zone entries.
For that to work smoothly, the Stars need a defensive grouping that provides the launch pad for forward runs. Players who exit the zone cleanly and focus on the head-man pass to spring others.
And the majority of the Stars defenders won’t—or can’t—do that. So all of the pressure to build offense from the back fell on Heiskanen last season. He delivered with a 73-point season, but the Stars’ overreliance on him was exposed by his injury against the Seattle Kraken and in the series against Vegas, when the Golden Knights overly pressured Heiskanen and dared to let the Stars’ other defenders beat them.
This is where the Stars need Harley and Lundkvist to ease the burden of offensive foundation from the back. Harley showed flashes of it last season: he was already the Stars’ second-best defender in the playoffs after spending most of the regular season in the AHL.
His ascension, however, also came at the cost of Lundkvist, who struggled in his first year with Dallas after arriving in a highly-touted trade, wasn’t eligible for the AHL, and wasn’t even considered a roster option for the NHL playoff run.
The Stars’ brass chose Harley over Lundkvist last season, and you can’t blame them based on the results. This season, though, DeBoer and his staff will attempt to choose both.
To Lundkvist’s credit, he took the fallout of last season in stride, and used it to build for this season. DeBoer has rewarded that effort with another blank slate, writing Lundkvist into the everyday lineup to start the season and handing him the second power play duties that used to belong to Ryan Suter.
Dallas has also worked to create a defensive alignment that better fits their forward-thinking lines, pairing Harley with Jani Hakanpää and Lundkvist with Esa Lindell to give their young defenders primary puck-carrying duties on their pair. That should bolster both players’ progress, and it makes Hakanpää and Lindell better. Lindell, in particular, has always struggled to find a comfort zone in the NHL once the puck is actually on his stick. Much of his $5.8-million-per-season contract was earned because of his proficiency in the defensive zone, and his ability to cover ice behind his long-time partner, the playmaking John Klingberg. The Swede took care of the offense, the Finn handled the defense, and the result was a balanced second pair.
When Klingberg walked in free agency, so did Lindell’s safety blanket. Lindell was asked to be an all-around defender, one who could help push the offense, and he struggled to fit the bill. Lindell’s default with the puck has always been to play the area game, sending it as far as possible from his net. The Stars needed him to be better at passing with purpose.
Now Lundkvist can be the offensive purpose and Lindell can revert to being the defensive coverage and supporting, deferring to his partner with the puck. It’s what worked so well for Klingberg’s prime in Dallas, and it could be the key to Lundkvist delivering on the hype of Jim Nill trading a first-round pick to land him.
Harley, meanwhile, can play a similar role with Hakanpää. Hakanpää provides an element the rest of the Stars defense lacks: he’s physically menacing and a genuine force in the corners. But his effectiveness is tied to playing with a partner who skates well and takes initiative with the puck. That was never Lindell, and Dallas suffered for it, as Hakanpää became a regular target for other teams’ transition offense. That weakness won’t be nearly so easy to exploit with Harley playing alongside him.
Rest assured before the first puck drops that the Stars will be very good this season, no matter how much or little Lundkvist and Harley give them. But to touch greatness, they’ll need both defenders to answer the questions Vegas exposed this spring. The future is now on Dallas’ blueline. And it could make the present very, very exciting.
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