Dallas Stars: What’s next after their Stanley Cup Final run?

What’s next for the Dallas Stars?

On Monday night, the Dallas Stars lost in the Stanley Cup Final to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Stars playoff run was unexpected. They beat the two highest favored teams in the Western Conference in Colorado and Vegas. The Stars also took the Eastern Conference champions to six games.

Despite this success, Dallas has perhaps more questions than any other team in the NHL, especially among playoff contenders. NBC play-by-play commentator Doc Emmerick gave plenty of evidence of this by reminding us all of the ages of Stars veterans Corey Perry, Joe Pavelski, and to a lesser extent Alexander Radulov. All three of those forwards were key to Dallas’ playoff run and all three are 34 years old or more.

Today, Dallas has about $15.5 million in cap space. That is without re-signing Perry or other their other unrestricted free agents (UFAs) Mattias Janmark, Andrej Sekera, and Anton Khudobin.

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Even if Dallas tried to recreate some of their playoff bubble successes, those UFAs might have to be let go. That would be so that Dallas could afford to re-sign it’s restricted free agents (RFA). Those would be Radek Faksa, Roope Hintz, and Denis Gurianov. Gurianov was the only 20 goal scorer for Dallas in the shortened regular season.

For planning purposes, Miro Heiskanen has one year remaining on his entry-level contract (ELC) and will need a significant pay raise. Dallas management would surely need to be replaced if they did not ensure that deal got done when the time came. Aside from Heiskanen and Gurianov the Stars could make a huge change in direction and it is reasonable.

Look at their first line. Tyler Seguin, 28-years-old, is signed for $9.85 million for seven more seasons. While that would be difficult to make a move on a contract like that, Seguin only scored two goals in the playoffs. That’s right, Dallas’ highest-paid player only scored two goals in his 26 playoff games. He would bring value elsewhere and might show up elsewhere as well.

Captain Jaime Benn, 31-years-old, had a much better playoff than Seguin. Benn scored eight goals with 11 assists in the playoffs. However, his regular-season numbers have been in decline. Between 2013-2018 Benn averaged .99 points per game. Over the past two regular seasons, that has dropped to .62 points per game. Not a good path when being paid $9.5 million.

Finally, Alexander Radulov, who was one point shy of matching Benn in playoff points. During the regular season, Radulov’s point production also fell to about one half of a point per game after two significantly better seasons prior. At the age of 34 and earning $6.25 million Radulov is another piece that Dallas could easily move away from.

If Dallas lets its older UFAs walk away, and move one of their expensive pieces they could most definitely make a run at some high-end free agents like Alex Pietrangelo. At forward, players like Tyler Toffoli or Mikael Granlund could add to Dallas’ top six.

Granlund in particular could be signed for a discount after one and a half seasons of disappointing hockey in Nashville. Granlund as a second-line center playing like his Minnesota days and a powerplay quarterbacked by Heiskanen/Pietrangelo would be scary.

With some of the Stars young up and coming players, they could also have an influx of youth on the team. Remember Joel Kiviranta, who netted a hat trick against Colorado in a game seven, was not even close to being a regular skater for the Stars last year. A number of those young players played while in the bubble including Nick Caamano and Thomas Harley. Caamano having even played in their elimination games against Tampa.

Dallas is in a very strange position. It is not often that we see a team in the Cup finals dismantle their roster. While the Stars should not necessarily dismantle, they are in an excellent place to reevaluate and rearm in preparation for what looks to be another strange NHL season.