2019-2020 Stars Regular Season Thread

[BigAl]

Do you mean if he scores 5.25 goals and also keeps up a per game scoring pace that includes those goals?

Yes, but I miscalculated.
He was scoring at .329 last season. If he had scored 5.25 goals last night it would have put him back on that pace. He needs 5.58 goals tonight.

[Troy McClure]

So he needs not only to score more goals than any Dallas Star ever in one game, but he also then needs to see his scoring pace soar seven times what it has been through last night to hit a season total that ended up tied for 60th in the league?

[cdanew]

Who woulda thunk it

[Knives Out]

Roope to IR.

[Troy McClure]

Caamano called back up with Cogliano hurt.

[ScubaSteve]

Draisaitl and McD have 41 and 37 points already. Seguin leads our team with 13.

Tomorrow night should be fun.

[SaintAngerBH]

Maybe we should sign a sumo wrestler to just physically take up the entire net.

[BigAl]

Caamano called back up with Cogliano hurt.

Cogliano has been invisible. I say let the kid have his spot permanently.

[cdanew]

As of this morning, the Stars have the 6th most points in the Western Conference, 5 points back of St. Louis with the same number of games played. But that only gets you the first wild card spot.

Oh yeah, and Edmonton and Arizona are 1-2 in the Pacific. What the heck is going on here?

[The Frugal Gourmet]

Based on where we started I am pleased.

[B Kat]

I've just been ignoring how well the team has played, especially without Hintz and Klingberg. I tamp down the excitement because the 1-7-1 start is still so fresh.

[The Frugal Gourmet]

when does hintz come back? we get him back with the rest of the team going well and this *poo poo* gets dangerous.

[ScubaSteve]

Or maybe Hintz was holding this thing back.

[The Frugal Gourmet]

i actually thought about that and was trying to figure out how hintz's presence was causing the other lines to get outplayed. there's a good hypothesis in there somewhere

[Math]

I think so. Never change a winning team, let's put Hintz on waivers and trade Klingberg for a bag of pucks.

[slaps]

https://theathletic.com/1391522/2019/11/20/stars-20-20-jamie-benn-takes-over-a-game-and-the-stars-followed-in-dominant-win/

Dowling says that, but it’s not entirely true. The Stars have tried a handful of other so-called depth players with Benn and Seguin, but very rarely have they had the success Dowling has shown in the past week.

Benn, Seguin and Montgomery have pointed to Dowling’s brain and his hockey sense when it comes to the fit.

“I like his brain. He understands timing and time and space,” Montgomery said. “He knows how to get open off of them and knows how to give them the puck when they’re in good positions. I can’t say that I envisioned that; the credit goes to them.”

I'm picking on this quote, but this is what drives me absolutely batshit about the Stars when they draft. Here is the coach and two of the team's top players (supposedly) talking about why a guy fits with them, and it's all about his "hockey sense." Yet when the Stars get to the draft table, they routinely pass on guys with great hockey sense in favor of guys who are big or whatever.

[Math]

Dowling says that, but it’s not entirely true. The Stars have tried a handful of other so-called depth players with Benn and Seguin, but very rarely have they had the success Dowling has shown in the past week.

Benn, Seguin and Montgomery have pointed to Dowling’s brain and his hockey sense when it comes to the fit.

“I like his brain. He understands timing and time and space,” Montgomery said. “He knows how to get open off of them and knows how to give them the puck when they’re in good positions. I can’t say that I envisioned that; the credit goes to them.”

Yeah, but we also have to be aware that the whole process takes time. I'm on the management's side on that one. We have to go through the whole Tourian area, avoid sucking Metroids while this damn bullets and fire bubbles piss you off, make it to the principal room and then use at least 20-30 missiles just to break the glass. Meanwhile, the doors keep shutting on your face if you take too much time.

[The Frugal Gourmet]

Eh, this is not anything. Every once in a while someone does well with Benn and Seguin. Won't last.

[slaps]

So are the Stars good now? Or is this a mirage?

[ScubaSteve]

I don’t think it’s fair to lump Benn and Seguin together and criticize them equally. One guy may not be quite the game breaker he was when he got here, but he’s still leading the team in scoring and is only slightly below his career pace. The other guy has been on a downward trend for five years and only recently pulled into the top 10 in team scoring even though he’s one of the highest paid players in the league.

[Troy McClure]

Two things from Seguin on BAD Radio today:

1. Seguin said the team has changed their approach. They've changed up how they play in the neutral zone by being more aggressive instead of hanging back on defense. Also, their forecheck is now a 2-1-2 with the two forecheckers putting pressure on the opposing defense instead of a more conservative 1-2-2. In meetings, they are now talking a lot more about aggression when it used to only be about defense. That said, they still seem themselves as a defense first team.

2. When the call was wrapping up, a host knew they wouldn't talk next week and said, "Happy American Thanksgiving," and Seguin replied, "Oh, is that today?"

[ScubaSteve]

Klingberg and Roope back tonight = end of the points streak

[BigAl]

Well, it was fun while it lasted.

[slaps]

https://theathletic.com/1420088/2019/12/02/pronman-nhl-prospects-i-was-wrong-about-2019-edition/

Miro Heiskanen, Dallas

Drafted: No. 3 overall in 2017

Heiskanen was not like the Makar case. I watched him a ton over a long period of time and I don’t think I egregiously underrated him. I consistently said I saw him as a top-pair defenseman but not a star. He was an All-Star as a 19-year-old and has been awesome; he arguably has been the best defenseman in the league this season, so I was certainly way off but not as dramatically.

The Heiskanen case amuses me because I remember coming out of the U18 worlds in North Dakota, where Heiskanen played as a 16-year-old, and talking to NHL folks about why he wasn’t getting hype as a potential top five/10 pick. Now a few years later I’m getting constant messages from Dallas fans about how much I underrate him.

The Heiskanen case for me was not about whether I did the homework. I watched him a lot in various tournaments and with his club team. Nor was it about not valuing what he did in Finland where he was a top player at a young age. It was more a case of not valuing a certain style of play. Heiskanen has an elite brain and elite feet, but I wouldn’t call him a super high skill type like Makar, Quinn Hughes or Rasmus Dahlin. Rather Heiskanen’s extremely efficient and poised, while still making a lot of plays and being a great two-way defenseman. This is a type of defenseman I’ve underrated systematically, and it’s been feedback I’ve gotten from NHL scouts in recent years that I need to calibrate into the way I do things.

I also feel like this quote is one the Stars could take to heart when it comes to some of their batshit first-round picks:

I remember a friend of mine who works for an NHL team told me, if I was ever wildly apart from the industry on a player, to ask myself why that was and to be very sure that you were not missing anything. That’s something I’ve thought about when looking back on my Tolvanen evaluation.

[Troy McClure]

I can see his blindspot being a difficult one for any scout to overcome. When you're watching these younger players, it's the skilled stuff that makes one stand out from another. As important and useful as a d-man who plays perfect positioning and is a world class poke checker may be, that's not exactly going to stand out the same way another guy who is racking up points with flashy highlight plays. A guy like Heiskanen can win a whole bunch of puck battles along the walls to make a big difference in his team having a chance to win, but that stuff doesn't jump out because you kind of expect a good player to win puck battles. There's also not a good way to track it to say player X wins 78% of his puck battles while other guys we also consider good win them 64% of the time.

[ToddM]

Yeah, but isn't that literally what scouts are paid to do?

[Troy McClure]

Yeah, but isn't that literally what scouts are paid to do?

It is. But it might explain why a guy like Lindell gets drafted in the third round while a guy like Honka gets drafted in the first round. One is steady but unflashy while the other is flashy but unsteady. Had scouts known Lindell's steadiness would translate as well as it has into a NHL minute-eating player, he'd have been drafted much higher. At the same time, had scouts known Honka's flashiness would not translate into being able to produce NHL points, then he would have been drafted much lower.

I'm sympathetic to scouts who get these things wrong because I don't think these are easy things to figure out when watching 17 year olds play. Had Lindell and Honka been on opposite teams as 17 year olds, I think all of us would come away thinking Honka would be the much better player because the stuff he can do with the puck against lower level competition is much more exciting to watch. The skill factor is going to get all of the attention even though it's pretty hard to predict which guys can take the skill game to the next level when you get outside the very top of a draft class.

[One_Timer]

As Val scores a 2nd goal. Haha.

[ScubaSteve]

And just like that we have a Val vs. Jamie goal scoring race.

[One_Timer]

Looking good for Val, teams considered.