Whether you may recognize it or not, the Dallas Stars are quickly becoming a team built around youthful energy and skill. And in the 2019 offseason, they just might find a way to get considerably younger. That’s great news for the future of the franchise.
When you compare where the Dallas Stars were at the beginning of the 2018-19 season to where they finished, there’s quite a shocking contrast.
As the Stars entered the season, no one quite knew what to think of them. They had a rookie head coach in Jim Montgomery that had never coached in any NHL capacity, didn’t make any significant signings or trades during the 2018 offseason (besides extending Tyler Seguin), and had a two-year playoff drought following them.
With all of that coming together, many assumed it would be another tough year for Dallas. And by the time the NHL Holiday Break came around, those assumers looked to be spot on. On Christmas Day, the Stars sat at 18-16-3 and were outside of the Western Conference Playoff picture. Their odds of making the playoffs sat below 50 percent. They had trudged through a heavy dosage of injuries to starters, played the majority of the season up to that point using a makeshift defensive lineup, and couldn’t find a way to click consistently on offense. Had it not been for Ben Bishop and Anton Khudobin, Dallas very well may have been at the bottom of the league standings.
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Simply put: things weren’t looking good for the 2018-19 Dallas Stars. A team that had been tasked with making up for back-to-back years of falling short wasn’t getting it done.
But then, a turnaround happened. After an iffy start to the 2019 calendar year, the Stars rebounded in a big way. They finished the year on a 20-11-3 run, qualified for the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, pushed their way to a first-round series win over the Nashville Predators, and set themselves up in a seven-game series against the St. Louis Blues.
Unfortunately, that’s where the dream stopped for the Stars. After an exciting, magical run into the month of May, Dallas dropped a 2-1 decision in double overtime of Game 7 and slipped into the 2019 offseason.
But the hope and hype that was built over the final four months of the season was enough to keep the Stars looking ahead at the future.
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And as the Stars built that promise down the home stretch of this past year, a handful of players began to step up and stand out.
Jason Dickinson turned on the offensive gas pedal and became a regular member in the top-six forward group. Rookie forward Roope Hintz became a household name around the NHL and turned into a legitimate scoring threat in the offensive zone. Miro Heiskanen continued to shine in his NHL debut and took his first NHL postseason by storm. Esa Lindell became the indispensable man for the Stars, playing heavy minutes and contributing on offense, defense, and special teams on his way to a hefty contract extension.
The list goes on and on. But as you analyze the hot streak that the Dallas Stars built and begin to pick it apart, there seems to be one relatively common theme tying it altogether: youth.
Many of the Stars’ young players took a big leap during the 2018-19 season, and those leaps helped the team as a whole take the next step.
Heiskanen, Hintz, and Dickinson all became regular NHL starters. Denis Gurianov, Joel L’Esperance, Dillon Heatherington, and Gavin Bayreuther were all called up from the Texas Stars at some point during the year and proved to be reliable NHL options. Even players that have been with Dallas for a while (like Lindell and Radek Faksa) turned in impressive seasons.
And that’s an encouraging sign. For a team that has relied primarily on veterans acquired via free agency or trade in order to stay competitive, the young guns putting on an impressive show in 2018-19 seems to be a big step in the right direction.
It’s all a part of the youth movement that the Dallas Stars are currently ushering in. With their younger players stepping up and taking on new roles, the Stars look equipped for the future.
And by the time the 2019 offseason ends, there’s a good chance they will be even younger.
According to Hockey-Reference.com, the Stars owned an average age of 28.2 during the 2018-19 season. The average league age, on the other hand, sat at 27.9. So, Dallas was just slightly above.
Gone Puck Wild
But that should all change in the summer ahead. That’s largely due to expiring UFA contracts.
The Dallas Stars currently have six unrestricted free agents on their roster. Jason Spezza (35), Mats Zuccarello (31), Ben Lovejoy (35), Marc Methot (33), Taylor Fedun (30), and Roman Polak (31) are all on track to become free agents this summer. In addition, the future of Martin Hanzal (32) is still up in the air, with the chance of him spending all of next season on long-term IR still prevalent.
The thread tying these players together is that none of them are under the age of 30.
And while the Stars may re-sign one or two of them (with Zuccarello being the popular choice among them all), most of them will likely be with new clubs next season.
That bodes well for the Dallas Stars. Not only will it open up a hefty amount of cap space that the Stars can spend on re-signing players and potentially picking up new talent, but it also drops the average age by a considerable amount.
With that being said, the door is also open for players like Gurianov, L’Esperance, and Bayreuther to become full-time NHL players next season.
It’s part of the youthful wave currently engulfing the Stars. There’s a chance that the Stars may only have five players over the age of 30 on their Opening Night roster next season. Obviously, that could change with free agent signings and potential trades.
But as of right now, the Dallas Stars are taking advantage of their developing youth and using them to build a bright and promising future.
As the league gets younger and faster, so do the Stars. The 2018-19 campaign opened the door for their rookies and young players to have a major impact going forward.
The kids are alright.