Dallas Stars: Balance On Defense Gives Them Options For Opening Night

The Dallas Stars have a young and promising defensive group with plenty of talent. With that being said, they also have a certain amount of flexibility. Here is how the blue line could shape up come opening night.

Defense wins championships. Everyone knows this. And for the past few years, the Dallas Stars haven’t possessed a good enough defense. As a result, the number of championships has been lacking entirely.

The Stars’ blue line has struggled with a handful of things over the last few seasons. But overall, the need for consistency has been their most prominent struggle.

Going into the 2013-14 season, they had five left-handed defenders in their starting lineup. And by game six of the playoffs that year, they had six lefties on the ice. 2014-15 brought about a down year as a relatively young defensive core tried to adapt to the NHL and Lindy Ruff‘s system. They finished 26th in the league in goals against average and missed the playoffs as a result.

In 2015-16, the Stars boasted a high-powered offense that led the league in scoring. And while the defensive structure was improved from the year before, there were still points where the offense had to bail the blue line out with a four or five goal performance. 2016-17 was a terrible year for the entire team in every area, with the defense letting up the second most goals across the NHL.

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But 2017-18 helped change a lot of that. With the addition of Ken Hitchcock behind the bench, an unlikely group of defenders granted the Stars one of the most prominent blue lines in the league. Dallas ended up finishing the year with the seventh-best goals against average. They looked more structured and focused in the defensive zone, gave up less high-danger chances, and did their job in keeping the opponent low on the scoreboard. The Stars still couldn’t find their way into the playoffs, but it was by no fault of the defense.

And all of a sudden, the Dallas Stars defense looks poised to be a legitimate threat for seasons to come.

First off, they’re young. After parting ways with defenders Dan Hamhuis (35) and Greg Pateryn (27) and adding Roman Polak (32) on July 1, the Stars will enter the 2018-19 season with an average age of 25.42 on the blue line. And when the 2019 offseason rolls around and both Polak (32) and Marc Methot (33) are off the books, that number could end up dropping even more.

Secondly, they also take up a small part of the team’s overall cap space. When including Miro Heiskanen as the seventh defender, CapFriendly.com estimates that the Stars will only spend $16,757,499 on their defense in 2018-19. That’s the third-lowest amount of cap space allocated to any defense in the NHL. It’s a great place to be when the talent and results are already there.

The Dallas Stars are young, talented, and performing at a team-friendly cost. But that’s not all.

They also have an impressively balanced attack.

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Defense in hockey is a broad umbrella that encompasses a lot of different styles. In other words, there are plenty of different “types” of defenders. There are offensive defensemen, defensive defensemen, and two-way defensemen. Some defenders are natural scorers while others are used for physicality.

The Stars have a nice mixture on their blue line. John Klingberg, Miro Heiskanen, and Julius Honka are all powerful forces on offense while also boasting composure on defense. On the other hand, Marc Methot, and Roman Polak are defensive-minded defenders that use their size and physicality to their advantage. To top it all off, Esa Lindell and Stephen Johns are multipurpose defenders that can be used in both areas.

It’s ideal to balance those talents throughout each pairing in the lineup, and the Stars did just that last year. This year, it’s likely that they will do much of the same.

On opening night, the Dallas Stars’ blue line could very well line up like this:

Esa Lindell – John Klingberg

Miro Heiskanen – Stephen Johns

Marc Methot – Julius Honka

Now, considering it will likely be Heiskanen’s first game at the NHL level, they might flip the second and third pairings. But the lineup above gives Dallas a unique balance of offensive and defensive talent in each duo.

Considering Jim Montgomery will be in charge for his first NHL game and no one knows quite what to expect from him yet, he may have a different idea. For example, if he wants the Stars want to embrace a more physical defensive structure, they may go with something along these lines:

Esa Lindell – John Klingberg

Marc Methot – Stephen Johns

Miro Heiskanen – Julius Honka

The first pairing seems pretty set in stone considering how well Lindell and Klingberg have worked together over the past two seasons. Lindell is proficient in playing a two-way game while Klingberg is one of the best offensive blue line talents in the NHL.