Dallas Stars Have Tough Choice Coming Up With Dan Hamhuis

If Dan Hamhuis continues to play as well as he has, integrating the great youth of the Dallas Stars blueline might become harder.

Watching the Dallas Stars and taking in a San Antonio Spurs game has the same vibe. Each team has a steady influx of youth and speed on their club, as they try to build around their mid-career superstars .

The Stars have had Esa Lindell, Mattias Janmark, Julius Honka, and others come though the ranks to assist cornerstone players Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin, while the Spurs have constructed around Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge with help from Kyle Anderson, Bryn Forbes, Dejounte Murray, and additional young guns.

But on both squads, you have that often forgotten, under-appreciated, somewhat washed and faded player that can somehow, someway contribute heavily. With practically zero expectations, 40-year-old Manu Ginobili puts on a show for fans in the Alamo City with his veteran recklessness and nothing-to-lose attitude.

He provides strong minutes and helps meant younger Spurs with his experience (he has won four NBA titles, so). It’s that what Dan Hamhuis is to this Dallas Stars hockey club. At 35, the former first-round National Hockey League Draft pick has chipped in invaluable time on the Stars middle defensive pair alongside Greg Pateryn for the most part.

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The relatively old age of Hamhuis has not slowed the Smithers, British Columbia native down one bit, as he has paced all Dallas Stars skaters in ice time in each of the past two games – both of which were home wins. Even when Hamhuis is forced to leave the game with an apparent eye injury (like on Sunday against San Jose), “Hammer” gave it his all.

Hamhuis skated for 21:13 on Sunday night, 2:51 of which came on the Stars penalty kill units. Even this, which overall led the Stars, was a compressed version of the Hamhuis we saw against St. Louis on Friday. 24:09 on the ice and a whopping 5:31 shorthanded. The former Nashville Predator and Vancouver Canuck garnered an assist in each aforementioned game.

All in all, he has become perhaps the perfect middle-pair defenseman. Hamhuis kills penalties better and more often than anybody on the Dallas Stars, eats up minutes for breakfast, and has become a stabilizing force on a blueline with four defensemen age 25-or-under. He is a security blanket that actually supplies immense security, the same way Ginobili contributes to the Spurs at 40.

But at some point, the young guys need to play, right? The Dallas Stars almost have too many of them, especially of the left-handed variety. In the American Hockey League right now, Niklas Hansson, Dillon Heatherington, and Gavin Bayreuther have progressed moderately well, and of course, defensive superprospect Miro Heiskanen is knocking on the door.

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So, will the Stars re-sign Dan Hamhuis to a short-term, middling-money deal, or let the prospects insert themselves into the fold? The answer is much more complicated than signing Hamhuis or letting him walk, and the Stars have to be careful with the many moving parts of it.

First, we have to look at the very, very preliminary 2018-19 blueline at American Airlines Center. John Klingberg and Esa Lindell will man the number one pair barring any trades (though inconceivable), while Marc Methot and Julius Honka, also lefty and righty respectively, are signed for next season. From there, it gets tricky.

Greg Pateryn is unsigned, but playing well alongside Hamhuis, while Stephen Johns is also without a 2018-19 deal with the Dallas Stars. Both are right-handed and relatively young (Pateryn being 27, Johns 25), so it’s safe to assume at least one will return with a green jersey over their back. Which one, of course, doesn’t matter in the case of Dan Hamhuis, but one or two roster spots less for Hamhuis to occupy.

With the Johns situation being the way it is (the Stars are still high on his potential), Hamhuis will likely be the one that goes. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Hamhuis, in a defensive alignment of Lindell-Klingberg, Heiskanen-Honka, Methot-Johns, would accept the role as the seventh defenseman. From the Stars standpoint, it doesn’t make sense, and it arguably makes even less sense for Hamhuis.

Hypothetically, the Stars can delay the debut of Heiskanen in the NHL, and let go of one of the two valuable right-handers. But at that point, is a then-36-year-old even that valuable? I would entertain the idea of re-upping on a Hamhuis deal, but I would give the jobs to the prospects instead if I was the general manager.

The Dallas Stars could pull off a Lindell-Klingberg, Heiskanen-Honka, Methot-Johns blueline with Pateryn as the seventh D and Heatherington as the first defenseman recalled if someone goes down with an injury or sickness of sorts. Bayreuther and Hansson, soon joined by John Nyberg, can keep cooking for awhile, but at no point past 2017-18 will Hamhuis really fit in the system.

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We’ve seen Jim Nill side towards veterans, however, so the whole situation is worth monitoring. Plus, Manu Ginobili is 40 and still balling, if you had forgotten about that metaphor.