Dallas Stars: Examining Their Center Group In 2017-18
By Josh Clark
The regular season is less than two weeks from starting, and the Dallas Stars’ lineup is anything but solved. One of the big question marks is in regards to how the center position will stack up.
Only 13 days separate the Dallas Stars from regular season hockey at the American Airlines Center. That’s a wonderful feeling.
But while there is plenty of hype surrounding the team about the year ahead, there is plenty that has to be decided. With one week left in the preseason, the Stars still have a lot of decisions and moves to make.
One of the big decisions comes down the middle of their forward lineup. The center position is one of the most important positions in hockey, and the Dallas Stars must decide soon on how their center group will be made up.
The Stars entered the 2017 offseason with plenty of weaknesses that needed to be fixed. The goaltending, defense, right wing, and special teams were a few contributing factors to the second-worst season in Stars history.
Dallas Stars
One problem the Dallas Stars did NOT have, however, was at the center position. Over the past few years, the Stars have accumulated a wide variety of depth and skill at center. Throughout last season, Tyler Seguin, Jason Spezza, Cody Eakin, Radek Faksa, and Devin Shore all played significant stints at center. Jason Dickinson, Mattias Janmark, and Gemel Smith have also proven to be NHL-ready centers.
The dot was the least of the Stars’ worries going into the 2017 summer. And yet, GM Jim Nill still found a way to upgrade the position.
Nill signed center Martin Hanzal to a three-year deal on July 1, adding yet another talented center to the mix. It was a great move that helps build up the Stars’ penalty kill and face-off win percentage.
But now the Stars have a slight problem. They are entering the 2017-18 season with an overload of talent at center. Seguin, Spezza, Hanzal, Faksa, Shore, Smith, and Dickinson all have the characteristics of an NHL-ready center. Which ones will make the lineup though?
This could be a tough question for the Stars to answer because of one simple reason: the overstocking of forwards in general. Dallas has somewhere around 16-17 NHL-ready forwards that could make an appearance in the lineup at sometime throughout the year. But if they have more than four forwards, where do the others factor in?
There was heavy speculation in the offseason that Spezza would shift to the wing on the second line and be replaced by Hanzal. The Stars have owned a fantastic one-two punch at center with Seguin and Spezza over the past few years, and Spezza’s talents aren’t necessarily “third-line” caliber. He’s known as a high-powered forward, not a depth forward.
There are plenty of options that the Stars can go with, and a lot of the centers are very flexible on offense.
In an interview yesterday, Ken Hitchcock noted that Seguin, Hanzal, Spezza, and Faksa will likely be the four centers that start the year for Dallas. How they line up and where each one plays is still up in the air, but these four are definitely the Stars’ best bet in the dot.
One of the Dallas Stars’ strongest areas is in the dot. They have plenty of strong assets and plenty of recruits that have the team deep in skill for the future.
Next: Predicting The Stars' Future On Defense
How the opening night lineup looks is anyone’s guess at this point. But one thing is for sure: the Stars’ centers will be ready to go.