Heading into Thursday’s night game with the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Stars had been out-possessed in four straight games, have been outshot in each of those contests, and this past weekend against the Philadelphia Flyers, they somehow let in three shorthanded goals in one game.
Then they lost 4-1 to the Maple Leafs.
Despite that, they’ve also been one of the NHL’s most successful teams: Dallas’ .750 points percentage is fourth in the NHL, trailing only the Boston Bruins, and Colorado Avalanche, Vegas Golden Knights, the latter of whom the Stars were two posts in a shootout away from switching places with in the league standings.
All of that serves as an important reminder of the expectations—and pressure—surrounding the Stars this season. Unlike the Cinderella Texas Rangers, who have now danced into the World Series for the first time since 2011, the Stars are an NHL behemoth expected to rank among the Stanley Cup favorites. The regular season is a means to an end with this team, and for Dallas to reach its full potential in the playoffs, the next six months must be about Pete DeBoer maximizing the depth Jim Nill invested in this offseason.
Because while you often hear about the impact a deep roster can have during a Stanley Cup chase, the ability to ease strain during the 82-game regular season creates a platform for championship-winning teams to build on. Look no further than the Stars’ foil, Vegas, whose depth forwards have helped carry the Golden Knights to that undefeated start. The fourth line of Will Carrier, Nicolas Roy, and Keegan Kolesar were the difference in the 5-2 win at Chicago on Saturday. On Tuesday, third-liner Paul Cotter did the heavy lifting in the 3-2 win over the Philadelphia Flyers. And the difference in last week’s victory over the Stars was depth defender Kaedan Korczak, who made the offensive difference in regulation.
Back in Dallas, Nill spent the offseason approaching roster construction the way a contender should following the Stars’ Western Conference Finals loss to Vegas. Yes, he made a big swing in signing Matt Duchene, but the bulk of his work was adding depth pieces that put the focus on the here and now instead of leaning too heavily on prospects in the AHL to fill voids. But is it being used as optimally as it should be?
To DeBoer’s credit, he trusted that depth enough to make the right decisions on opening night against the St. Louis Blues. Roope Hintz was nursing an injury, and with the Stars having five days between Game 1 and 2, DeBoer scratched his top-line center, instead choosing to play both of his bottom-two forwards, Sam Steel and Ty Dellandrea. It paid off: Dallas won, Hintz got extra time to heal, and a well-rested Hintz has been a menace since returning to the lineup.
Since that game, DeBoer has split the difference between Dellandrea and Steel, healthy scratching both of them as they’ve rotated into the fourth-line winger spot alongside Radek Faksa and Craig Smith. It’s a fine policy on paper and, so far, in practice, too. But both Dellandrea and Steel are superior to the average fourth liner, which gives the Stars a chance to think outside the box to supercharge some of their best players a la the Hintz maneuver.
A proposal: Steel should be the Stars’ every-night fourth-line winger. Dallas needs a cohesive fourth line, and allowing Steel to play each game with Faksa and Smith would result in a level of consistency the Stars have lacked when that unit is on the ice.
Then, instead of worrying about getting Dellandrea in on the fourth line, the Stars should be using him as an organizational multi-tool who rotates through the top three lines to ease wear and tear. While the players themselves would disagree with this publicly, veterans like Hintz, Duchene, Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Mason Marchment, and Evegenii Dadonov need to be discreetly load-managed by DeBoer to keep them at their best. We’ve already seen the impact that night off provided for Hintz. Meanwhile Duchene, Marchment, and Dadonov have all struggled to stay fully healthy for an 82-game campaign in the past. Benn and Seguin are older players whose styles have worn on them; the occasional breather wouldn’t be a bad thing for them, either.
Dellandrea should be playing every night. He’s only 23 and versatile; aside from Hintz’s role, he’s a fine replacement for the other five players on any given night. In some cases, like that of the struggling Marchment, Dellandrea’s steady play could potentially be an improvement over the player he’s replacing. No, he wouldn’t have a formal line to call his own, but he also wouldn’t need to own a specific role and spot in the lineup. Players who need the occasional game off, but won’t admit it, are covered, and Dallas is able to keep all 13 forwards involved in the process.
I tossed this idea by a couple NHL scouts in the past week, picking their brains on whether it could and would work for Dallas. They were split, not on the concept, but rather whether the application was feasible.
“It’s outside the box, for sure, but I see how it could be done, plus I like the idea of certain guys on that Dallas roster getting extra time to heal up at times,” one said. “But I think selling that group of players on it, that be the tough part on Pete [DeBoer.]”
Another scout liked the long-term ideal of the plan for Dellandrea.
“At some point, he’s going to be part of their core, or he isn’t; I really don’t like the idea of him being scratched,” they said. “I think you’d be able to find a better answer to whether he has that spark to be a higher-in-the-lineup guy, too.”
The biggest issue with the plan is that it goes against the status quo of things, which can be a tough sell in the tradition-steeped thinking of the NHL.
But the Stars shouldn’t worry about the status quo this regular season. That’s why it’s OK to be critical of a 4-0-1 start, and it’s why it’s OK to compare them to Vegas and Boston. For Dallas, the goal is to hoist the Stanley Cup in June, and they should use all the tools in their box to try and get there. Even one outside of it, too.
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