NHL Summer Splash Rankings: No. 27, Dallas Stars

It’s the Dallas Stars’ turn to be analyzed in The Hockey News’ NHL summer splash rankings.

We’ve been counting down each NHL team’s off-season, based on which franchises improved, stayed the same or got worse this off-season. We’re breaking things down in terms of additions and departures, including hirings and firings where applicable.

Be sure to see the teams that finished lower than the Stars at the bottom. But first, let’s look at Dallas’ moves and see why we ranked them 27th in our NHL summer splash rankings.

Additions

Radek Faksa (C), Glen Gulutzan (coach)

The Breakdown: The Stars made it to the Western Conference final and lost for the third straight season, falling to the Edmonton Oilers for the second straight year. Stars GM Jim Nill faced a salary cap crunch after acquiring and re-signing right winger Mikko Rantanen at the NHL trade deadline, so he re-signed as many players as he could – Matt Duchene, Jamie Benn, Mavrik Bourque, Nils Lundqvist and more – while adding a piece in free agency.

The biggest addition for Dallas is the return of Gulutzan behind the bench. This will be Gulutzan’s second stint as Stars coach. Given that he failed to get Dallas into the Stanley Cup playoffs in the two seasons he ran the team from 2011 to 2013, he’s under immediate pressure to at least get the Stars to the Cup final this coming season.

The only addition roster-wise is another Star on his second go-around with the team – veteran Faksa, who will step in as a bottom-six center. He’s a downgrade from the rental acquisition that was Mikael Granlund, but Faksa remains a decent performer who can help defensively.

Jake Oettinger, Matt Duchene and Radek Faksa (Jerome Miron-Imagn Images)

Departures

Mikael Granlund (C), Mason Marchment (LW), Evgenii Dadonov (RW), Cody Ceci (D), Matt Dumba (D), Brendan Smith (D), Peter DeBoer (coach)

The Breakdown: The salary cap-challenged Stars had to let go of three valuable forwards – Granlund (who left for Anaheim via free agency), Marchment (who was traded to Seattle) and Dadonov (who departed for New Jersey). That’s a major dent in Dallas’ offense, which was the third-most-potent in the NHL last year at 3.35 goals-for per game.

The Stars can still win blowout games as well as tight defensive matchups, but they won’t be quite as dangerous as they were on paper a couple of months ago.

Meanwhile, the Stars' defense corps changed after many pinpointed it as Dallas’ biggest weakness this past season. Nill unloaded the contract of Dumba on the Pittsburgh Penguins, while Ceci left for the L.A. Kings in free agency, and Smith remains a UFA. Neither player recorded more than 10 points for Dallas this past season,

And of course, DeBoer self-immolated during and after the Western final loss, taking issue with star goalie Jake Oettinger’s play. Nill clearly sided with his top goalie, and DeBoer is now looking for work after three years behind Dallas’ bench.

The Bottom Line

The Stars have made significant moves, but they haven’t gotten better, and on offense, they’ve taken a slight step backward.

That said, the Stars are getting their first full year of superstar right winger Rantanen, and bringing back captain Benn on a $1-million salary with performance bonuses is a nice job by Nill.

Marchment and Granlund definitely leave a hole in the lineup, but you can rest assured that, even with only $1 million in cap space, Nill will find a way to improve his lineup with a trade or two during the season.

Nill has built his team to win now. And while there’s a looming debate about whether he has room to re-sign star left winger Jason Robertson when he becomes an RFA next summer, the Stars will roll the dice one more time with the group that got them into the Final Four for three years running.

The Stars are low in our NHL summer splash rankings because there’s no question they’re not quite as good as they were at their peak last season. That does not automatically mean they had a bad off-season.

There are exceptions in the rankings for teams that did significantly less or more than expected, with some squads already on the list not doing enough – either quantity-wise or quality-wise on the trade or free-agent market – to support their core players. Dallas isn't an exception, which goes to show the tight margin between the teams as we move up this list.

The back-to-back-to-back GM of the year was active in damage limitation with the cap crunch they had, and Nill deserves credit for that.