Dallas Stars: Last Year’s Grade, Next Year’s Guess: Jason Spezza

Our August series of Dallas Stars player grades continues today with center Jason Spezza, who had a rough season last year.

When the Dallas Stars brought in Jason Spezza, he was supposed to be a major asset and a solution to the second-line center vacancy.

Last Season

Jason Spezza’s 2017-18 Grade: D-

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Spezza has had varying levels of success in Dallas. He had 33 goals and 63 points in 2015-16 and was a large part of the team’s success that year. That was his best year with the Stars, but last season was his worst.

He ended the season with 8 goals and 24 points, by far his lowest numbers of his career in seasons where he played 40+ games. His next worst season was 2016-17, where he 15 goals and 50 points in 10 fewer games.

His plus/minus was -12, further lowering his career numbers while here in Dallas. He was at a +54 throughout his time in Ottawa, but he’s at a -33 collectively in Dallas. However, he had the sixth best relative Corsi on the team.

Spezza’s lacking play led to him being healthy scratched during the season. That’s common for depth guys looking to break in and stay in the line-up, but it almost never happens to guys making $7.5M. For the cost of his contract, which was literally 10% of the 2017-18 salary cap, he can’t be a guy getting healthy scratched.

His bad numbers last year caused fans to turn on him, and with good reason, but one interesting thing to note last year is that he did receive a fifth place vote for the Lady Byng. Sure, he only had 12 penalty minutes, but the award is meant to be for a players who also have a good season.

The only thing crazier than him getting a vote is the fact that Tobias Reader, who had numbers that were similar to Spezza’s but with one less point, got 17 points from voting. The only thing in Reader’s favor is that he got 6 PIMs instead of 12. Reader ended up in 23rd place, where Spezza was tied for 49th, and he even got a 2nd place vote. If that’s the standard, then arguably Spezza should’ve done better in the Byng voting.

Next Season

Next season is the last one on Spezza’s contract, so either way, he’ll be coming off the books and freeing up a lot of cap space for what will hopefully be Tyler Seguin’s extension. He probably won’t spend the year doing nothing, waiting until he can leave Dallas, though.

He needs to have a bounceback season if he’s hoping to still keep playing. He turned 35 this summer and his numbers have gone seriously downhill. However, with the new coaching staff, he can probably do just that. In all likelihood, his numbers won’t be where they were in his prime, but there’s still a good chance that he can get above 50 points at least. If he takes the second-line center position to start the season with Martin Hanzal still missing, he had a chance to prove himself in Montgomery’s system and make his case to keep the job.

Fans were understandably pretty unhappy with Jason Spezza last year. What grade would you give him?