Dallas Stars Lines: Where Valeri Nichushkin Fits In On Offense

With just 30 days remaining until the Dallas Stars are officially back in action for the 2015-2016 season, there are plenty of unanswered questions left hanging in the balance. Questions about the defense and which players make the cut, how the goaltending scenario will pan out, what the offense will look like. All questions that have yet to be answered. But that’s perfectly normal, because that is what training camp is for.

The defense is still in the blueprint process, deciding which six of the potentially nine NHL starters will start for the team on opening night. Once that is figured out, they will be able to begin working with the pieces they have and forming pairs.

On the other hand, the Dallas Stars offense looks to have more or less found their 12 starters. But trying to decipher the way they will be breaking up into lines is where a division comes in. More specifically the top two lines are seen with contrast from one Stars fan to another.

Let’s break each line up and look at the “more-than-likely” players filling in each spot:

Jamie Benn – Tyler Seguin – ?

? – Jason Spezza – Ales Hemsky

Antoine Roussel – Cody Eakin – ?

? – Vernon Fiddler – Colton Sceviour

Extras: Valeri Nichushkin, Patrick Sharp, Patrick Eaves, Travis Moen, Curtis McKenzie, Brett Ritchie

Not too reassuring, is it? Truth be told the Stars could put multiple players at each one of these positions, considering each player has a viable reason to be in each one. But the one name with perhaps the biggest question mark is Valeri Nichushkin.

The 20-year old winger has experienced an interesting career path since being drafted by the Dallas Stars in the first round at tenth overall during the 2013 NHL Entry Draft. Nichushkin would prove himself through his play and his effort in training camp, ultimately leading to him gaining a starting spot on the opening night roster in 2013.

Nichushkin would start the 2013-2014 season out at a slow pace, as is expected with any 18-year old rookie from Russia with an extremely small amount of English in his vocabulary. But Val would become better acquainted with the team and the new atmosphere as the season wore on. His mix of physicality and scoring touch made him a wonderful asset in a young Stars offensive scheme.

He would tally his first NHL point just 17 days in and score his first goal exactly one month after starting the season. His capabilities and knowledge of the game eventually earned him a spot on the top line with Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn, where he would remain for the majority of the season. Nichushkin continued to grow, meshing well and becoming a decent compliment to Seguin and Benn. At the end of the year, he had put up 14 goals and 34 points, along with a +20 on-ice rating through 79 games. He carried this momentum into the postseason with the Stars, scoring a goal and grabbing an assist in six games.

Next: Three Stars Who Need To Have A Breakout Year This Season

In other words, it was a stellar rookie season for Nichushkin. After a strong offseason of recruiting and trading, the Stars seemed destined for big things, with Val being a big piece of their overall success.

But both of these theories would soon be turned to dust. Not only did the Dallas Stars fall well short of their expectations in 2014-2015, but Nichushkin was absent for the majority of the year.

Training camp was a struggle for Val, and he ended up missing a good portion of it in order to try and heal the nagging pain in his groin and hip. After the first two games of the season, Nichushkin was placed on the injured reserve list for an undisclosed amount of time. He would return a month later for two more games before being shut down entirely for hip surgery. Nichushkin would be sidelined from November 6th to April 3rd, missing out on a total of 73 games. He would end up only tallying one assist throughout 2014-2015 while trying to completely recover from surgery.

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