Dallas Stars: Last Year’s Grade, Next Year’s Guess: Mattias Janmark

Dallas Stars forward Mattias Janmark came back last season after missing an entire season with a knee condition, and today we’ll look at how well his season turned out.

Dallas Stars management and fans were both unsure how Janmark would play after his recovery, but he ended up looking like he hadn’t missed a step.

Last Season

Mattias Janmark’s 2017-18 Grade: A-

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After Janmark missed all of 2016-17 recovering from surgery on his knee due to his osteochondritis dissecans (yes, I had to look up the correct spelling on that), no one knew how he would play. He came in and had the most goals of any player other than the top line.

His 19 goals put him fourth on the team and his 34 points are good for fifth. Granted, there’s a big gap between fourth place John Klingberg’s 67 points and Janmark’s 34, but he still played very well.

Possession numbers were a weak spot for Janmark, but he was putting up solid minutes and was one of the few guys actually producing for the team.

He played a little bit on both the power play and penalty kill, and while he wasn’t the star of either side of the special teams, he did well, including decent numbers on penalty kill possession and a pair of short-handed goals.

Next Season

While this season was good for Janmark, his knee is still a question mark and it will continue to be. It could keep holding up and he could continue to have a long and productive career, but there’s always a chance that it doesn’t (knock on wood, everyone). However, at this point, it looks like his recovery’s going well and he’s in all likelihood going to play just as well next year, if not better.

He went from 15 goals in his first full season to 19 last year. If the second line could find some stability, he should hit 20 next year and possibly higher. Breaking 25 isn’t out of the question, especially if he, Jason Spezza, and Valeri Nichushkin manage to find some of the chemistry they had in 2015-16 when they played together, particularly if Spezza is at least mostly back to form and if Nichushkin’s play is better after two more years of development.question.

We’re into the home stretch of this series as the last articles of returning players grade the five guys who didn’t miss a single game last year. Come back tomorrow for the next one.