Breaking Down the Dallas Stars’ Curious Moves (and Lack Thereof) in Free Agency
And every bright neon sign turned into stars
And the sun and the moon seemed to be ours
Each road that we took turned into gold
But the dream was too much for you to hold
***
After spending the morning updating a lot of the possibilities and moves in the last post, I decided to just dump all of my thoughts into a new place, so here you go. Let’s talk about how millions of dollars were given to a bunch of people in ice skates.
As of Monday afternoon, the Dallas Stars have $4.6 million in cap space left, with just Thomas Harley to sign and maybe one more depth forward.
Stars moves today all seem pretty indicative of an RFA bridge deal for Thomas Harley
— Sean Shapiro (@seanshapiro) July 1, 2024
The Stars can give Harley three- to four-ish million on a bridge deal, which seems in the neighborhood of correct. They also seemed laser-focused on avoiding too many serious commitments beyond the next two years, when Logan Stankoven and Jason Robertson will be up for new (surely lucrative) deals. Mark Janko & Company’s cap calculations have always taken those sorts of things into account, and it wouldn’t shock me if that was a factor in keeping them away from longer deals to forwards like William Carrier (six years!) and Michael Amadio (three). Obviously a player like Tanev is worth a few years at a premium cap hit, but the Stars clearly weren’t going to give out term unless it was the right player. Or, what they decided what the right player. Or at least, a player on the right side. Same thing, basically.
***
Going into today, I had a sneaking suspicion that the Stars would pivot to another top-four option with Tanev going to Toronto, then fill out the margins of the defense with cheap, one-year deals, leaving them room to make an add at forward after the high-priced names had all been taken.
I was wrong. The Stars instead decided to spend $8 million on the following newcomers:
Brendan Smith, $1 million x 1 year
Matt Dumba, $3.75 million x 2 years
Ilya Lyubushkin, $3.25 million x 3(!) years
Dallas also brought back old friends Sam Steel, Matt Duchene, and Nils Lundkvist for $5.5 million. Forwards are cheaper, obviously, and Duchene took a heavy discount to return to Dallas for personal reasons (and buyout money from Nashville), but I gotta be honest: if I’m Duchene, I don’t know how thrilled I’d be to see the money Dallas saved on my contract being given to players like Lyubushkin, Dumba, and Smith. Duchene scored 65 points last year, and the Stars just gave Ilya Lyubushkin and Matt Dumba more years and more money. Right-handed defenders bring a premium in free agency, but man, it’s hard not to think that Sean Walker’s deal with Carolina (in a state with higher taxes) wouldn’t have been far more preferable to either of those options, in a vacuum.
Sean Walker, signed 5x$3.6M by CAR, is a skilled offensive defenceman who can carry the puck and create scoring opportunities and goals. Did well at basically everything this season on PHI's second pair. Concern would be size and if he can repeat this season. #LetsGoCanes pic.twitter.com/AxjYkOg7pE
— JFresh (@JFreshHockey) July 1, 2024
But we don’t live in a vacuum (despite how much Texas summers do suck), so the Stars did something else.
To start with the smallest deal, Brendan Smith is a borderline NHLer at this point in his career. After being famously waived on his birthday in the first year of a four-year UFA deal, Smith has worked hard to stay in the league. That’s not nothing, but at 35 years old, he also doesn’t offer any huge somethings, particularly with the left-handed depth Dallas has (even before factoring in Lian Bichsel). His main virtue at this point is being a Trusted Veteran, which is worth more to coaches than to fans, typically. He also “plays with an edge,” which I believe was a factor in his signing. One also surmises that Smith is a player who can hold down Lian Bichsel’s spot until he’s ready to take it, whether that be in training camp, later in the year, or next summer.
Matt Dumba, for all of his warts (and history with Joe Pavelski), has at least played top-four minutes for a large portion of his career. He’s also played for some less-than-great teams lately, and while his minutes dropped in the playoffs to a third-pairing level after Tampa acquired him at the deadline, he did play every game against the eventual champs without embarrassing himself. High praise, I know. He’s, ah, also a right-handed shot, which the Stars were clearly prioritizing today. That’s not exactly the ideal player type to sign for two years, but given that this is the same player Minnesota signed for $6 million x 5 years, you figure there’s at least a glimmer of upside in paying the going rate, even if Dumba hasn’t shown it lately. Maybe you play him next to Lindell and they combine to keep things quiet. Maybe he even plays next to Heiskanen every now and then to bring more of a physical presence.
There’s a player there, is the point. On its own, I don’t completely loathe the Dumba deal, even if it’s far less appealing than a couple more million to players like Matt Roy, or a couple more years to Sean Walker, or any number of marginal one-year deals for players who are easy enough to swap out at the deadline if you find a better option. All told, aside from Dumba’s hit on Pavelski in 2023, there’s not a ton for fans to outright hate about the deal, even if it’s a bit of an overpay for what you’re likely to get. Teams don’t usually get surplus value from all six defensemen, after all, and Dumba has utility, albeit of a lesser sort.
But Dumba’s wasn’t the only deal to bring a justifiably mixed reception. In fact, his feels like the far better of the two significant defense additions, and that’s the problem. Ilya Lyubushkin has always been a bottom-pairing player with zero upside, and that’s putting it rather mildly. Adding him for three years on top of Dumba really feels like it ties the Stars’ overvalued right hand behind their back when it comes to flexibility, as he can’t really play up the lineup, but he can certainly live down to your expectations.
We have signed Ilya Lyubushkin to a 3-year, $3.25 Million AAV contract.
Welcome to #TexasHockey, Ilya!
MORE: https://t.co/abt2u9iuyp pic.twitter.com/9bSqMlK5Fh— Dallas Stars (@DallasStars) July 1, 2024
Never have understood GMs' fascination with Lyubushkin. In 6 seasons, he's only put up one season about replacement per our xGAR model ('19-20). Our GAR projections for '24-25 have him as the 3rd worst player in the league. There's a lot going on here that I don't understand. pic.twitter.com/54vjx2Pwr9
— EvolvingWild (@EvolvingWild) July 1, 2024
Lyubushkin’s reputation is “grit” and “nastiness.” He’s the sort of defender GMs and coaches fantasize about wearing down another team’s forecheckers over the course of a playoff series. He’s also not very good at hockey when it comes to the puck going the direction you want it to go or not go. Put bluntly, Lyubushkin’s best-case scenario is closer to Alex Petrovic than anyone else. Those who remember Adam Pardy and Aaron Rome will be familiar with this sort of player, as well as the pre-Gaglardi Stars’ propensity to sign them. Am I saying this is the defensive version of the Martin Hanzal contract? Not unless you read that sentence without the question mark at the end, which I cannot legally prevent you from doing.
There’s no way around the fact that this contract, especially when it was confirmed to be for three years rather than Elliotte Friedman’s initial report of two years, is in the conversation for the worst deal of July 1st. To nickel and dime better and more important players only to hand over $10 million across three years to a player who has played for four teams in six years (or five if you count the Toronto stints separately) is just baffling. Surely Nill must have been competing with another team for Lyubushkin on a ticking clock, because there’s no way he gives him that contract unless he was scared of losing him otherwise. This deal also suggests that the Stars’ growing analytics department is not quite running the ship, asitwere.
At best, Lyubushkin feels like a tougher Jani Hakanpää replacement (who himself went to Toronto for 2 years at $1.5 million, by the way). You can see how the Stars might have talked themselves into seeing Lyubushkin as a nastier version of the Finn who missed the playoffs with knee issues. You can also see how they might have labeled Dumba as a tougher version of Lundkvist, a player who can actually play up the lineup while also being physical and all that. When you start forcing comparisons on yourself, it’s easy to find the right label.
But sure, if you squint, Dumba feels like a bargain-bin version of Tanev with regard to mobility and right-handedness and minute-munching and…not much else. And that’s where I think the Stars got off track today: by focusing on roles and identity over quality and efficiency.
We talked at length last year about how crucial Tanev was to fixing the Stars’ defensive imbalance, and Dallas had to replace Tanev all over again once he decided to stay in Canada. With comparable right-handed defensive options commanding significant term, I think Nill had to make a choice. He could try to hand out five or six years to UFAs like the small-ish Sean Walker or the pricier Matt Roy, or he could take three years of the non-physical Alex Carrier, for example. But none of those make the defense “nastier” or more “Vegas-like,” which I think was the goal. Vegas did win a Cup recently, after all.
Instead of going the Carolina route of skating and transition ability, Nill chose to give less term to players who his coaching staff would (presumably) trust outright. And in signing Lyubushkin and Dumba and even Smith, I think it’s clear that the Stars wanted to give their defense more of an “edge.” We all heard how the Vegas series may have worn the Stars down prematurely, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Dallas decided to re-invent the defense a bit this summer to make themselves “tougher to player against,” or whatever old saw you prefer.
The Stars are remaking the right side of their blue line, bringing in two right-shot defenseman on short-term (2-year) deals.
Here's my spit-ballin' depth chart:
Harley – Heiskanen
Lindell – Dumba
Bichsel – Lyubushkin
Smith – Petrovic#TexasHockey https://t.co/Go67g6mtwu— Owen Newkirk (@OwenNewkirk) July 1, 2024
We’ll see if the new identity of the blue line proves to be a better one than last year, where it was clearly the Achilles heel of the team until Tanev was brought in. But to be frank, it’s tough for fans to see players like Scott Wedgewood, who said he really wanted to stay in Dallas, leave for a small raise from a division rival in favor of a backup goalie with a reprehensible incident of assault in his past. If Dallas has really dialed in their cap number such that they couldn’t give $500K to a known quantity with good character, then they must have a lot of confidence in that extra money that landed Lyubushkin being used to bring something other than a sinkhole on defense, as he’s been for most of his career.
***
I do wonder if the Stars’ original plan in buying out Ryan Suter was to re-sign Tanev with the extra money and to bring in one cheaper, grittier right-hand shot like Dumba or (sigh) Lyubushkin, with Lundkvist as depth. And when Tanev then went to Toronto (which seems like something Dallas could’ve anticipated earlier, by the way), they had to scramble and add one more item into the shopping cart. And at that point, they had to take what they could get from their list of “grittier” players.
In other words, I suspect that Sean Walker, Alex NylanderCarrier, and maybe even Matt Roy were never seen as viable alternatives to Tanev. The Stars wanted to adjust the identity of their defense, and Walker, for all his playmaking upside, doesn’t do that. Roy wanted term (and perhaps an Eastern Conference team), and the other options out there were commanding things Nill wasn’t comfortable offering.
One caution I’d add: for fans, it’s hard to see deal after deal get Tweeted out only for your team to overpay for a third-pairing guy, but it’s even harder to see your team go crazy and sign Chandler Stephenson for seven years (or even Sean Avery, as I can tell you from experience) just to prove a point. So I suppose discretion is still the better part of valor. One would suspect that Ilya Lyubushkin is not as familiar with that phrase, though.
If you look at Nill’s track record, he doesn’t really hand out anything longer than four-year deals to players from other teams in free agency. He wants to retain flexibility, and generally speaking, that’s worked well for the Stars. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing towards term over salary this summer, and the Stars weren’t willing to budge beyond three years. That limited their options, for better or for worse.
The #TexasHockey signed:
Dumba $3.75M
Lyubushkin $3.25M
Duchene $3M
Lundkvist $1.25M
DeSmith $1M
Smith $1M
Steel $1.2M
$4.67M Projected Cap Space with 19 active players (11F/6D/2G)
RFA: Harleyhttps://t.co/UWIlWte5y0— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) July 1, 2024
With the young core they have right now, there’s still plenty of reasons to think they’ll be able to compete for a Stanley Cup, particular if Bichsel arrives ahead of schedule. But with Benn and Seguin and Duchene on the wrong side of 30 and Pavelski’s production not certain to be replaced, it’s hard to bet on the Stars’ fending off the rest of the Central Division over 82 games again. And maybe they know that. Maybe they genuinely don’t care about seeding, given how much good it did them this year, and they’re more focused on the playoffs. It wouldn’t be the first time they made a big course correction in the early summer to address a perceived problem in the late spring.
They’ll still be a good team next year. In fact, how many teams can you point to that have a definitively flawless top four, let alone a top six? Everyone knows Edmonton’s defense corps was Evan Bouchard, Mattias Ekholm, and a dartboard Kris Knoblauch threw at blindfolded each night; the Stars don’t have Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl, but they do still have a very, very good forward group that they should be able to keep together, given the roster as constructed.
But as a fan, you don’t care about Jason Robertson’s next contract right now. You care about the next playoff run, the next regular season. You don’t want the roster to be good enough; you want it to be better every summer. And Dallas, for all their excellent construction, has failed to take a step forward for one of the few summers in Jim Nill’s history in Dallas. At best, it’s likely that they’ve sidestepped into a different methodology. Part of that was out of their control, as Chris Tanev appeared to really, really want to go back to Canada, and Toronto really, really wanted to sign his cobbled-together frame until he was 40 years old. But part of it was also by choice. Dallas chose to sacrifice transition ability for punishing hits, and the data we have tend to suggest that you need both.
With Petrovic and Lundvkist, the Stars now have four viable right-handed defensemen. With Heiskanen, Harley, Lindell, Smith, and Bichsel, they have five viable left-handed defensemen. Jim Nill loves his blue-line depth, and he’s gotten it, or at least a wider surface area of the pool. The only question that hasn’t been answered today is, ironically, the one that contracts intend to spell out: what will these decisions end up costing the Stars?