Best thing to do is to keep losing and get a top 5 pick.

Just realized we haven't won back to back games since we started 4-0.

Insane how close yet how far away they are.

Do we have any overtime wins? Is there a record for the most overtime losses in nhl history?

South Platte said:

---

Do we have any overtime wins? Is there a record for the most overtime losses in nhl history?

---

The record is 18 over an 82 game season. We might break it in 56...

My thoughts exactly. Look how long it's taken bishop and Seguin to come back from surgery. Just do it now.

For anyone that hasn't gotten a WC yet, you can get one here for the best price anywhere, $170 Bishop.

He only has 50s and 52s at the moment.

They will go fast so act now if these fit you.



https://www.sportsk.com/stars-wc-bishop.html

TV Casualty said:

---

Just go ahead and shut Hintz and Radulov down. Get them ready for next year.

---

Yeah. I still think this is a good roster but the best case this year seems to be get beat by Tampa in the first round.

Time to get healthy.

I'm going to split this up into two posts. First one is our list of free agents after this year.

Letting Go in Free Agency:
Comeau
Stephen Johns? (Still on the books right now?)
Jason Dickinson
Rhett Gardner
Colton Point
Mark Pysyk
Justin Dowling
Nick Caamano
Tanner Kero
Taylor Fedun
Joel Hanley

Potential loss in expansion draft:
Dobby

The list is longer that are free agents after this season, but none that makes me think we'll resign them. But just signing Kivi, Cogs, Miro, and big rig, frees up roughly $20.5 million in cap space if you lose Dobby. You'll have to sign maybe 5-6 guys for depth making about ~925,000/year which reduces the free agent money to ~$15.6 mil.

Current Salaries:
Miro - $894,166
Oleksiak - $2,137,500
Cogliano - $3,250,000
Kivi - $925,000


You'll have to give Miro a huge raise, probably a 7-8 year deal worth ~9mil per year? Or is that too little, honestly not sure what he is expecting. Cogs won't make $3.25 on the open market being 34 and not a scorer. Think we could get him for a 2-3 year deal worth $2.25 per. Oleksiak is in his prime earning years and will probably want $3.5 if not more. Kivi, young and unproven, and not a top-two liner will get a raise but nothing crazy. Probably around $1.5mil. So that will bring the new salaries to:

Miro - $9,000,000
Oleksiak - $3,500.000
Cogs - $2,250,000
Kivi - $1,500,000

So to resign those 4 guys, it will take an additional 9,043,334 from what we were paying them before. So taking it from that $15.6 million will leave roughly $6.5mil in free agency to sign someone. That's a nice chunk of change to sign a difference maker and doesn't include anything creative done with contracts, or maybe even trading away a big salary this season. But it will all determine what salary we lose in the expansion draft, that 6.5 million number is with us losing Dobby, if we lose someone with an expiring contract we would have about 3mil or someone if someone like Sekera it would drop it down to roughly $5 million.

Our roster, which I'll get into in my next post, is surprisingly really deep (if we can stay healthy) and a ton of young and exciting talent. Need the right system that maximizes the speed and skill we'll have....

So our potential lineup for next year if free agency works out like I posted about in my prior post:

Forwards:

Hintz - Pavelski - Robertson
Benn - Seguin - Gurianov
Faksa - Cogliano - Radulov
Kiviranta - ???? - Dellandrea


Top Line:
You could switch Pavelski and Seguin if the chemistry those 3 currently have doesn't last or age finally catches up with Pavelski. And that would be a bad ass line with Seguin being the savvy veteran. Robertson will be wearing the "A" for us within the next 3 years, I'm super high on him. And Hintz is on fire right now and playing hurt. Hard to imagine what they'd be playing like if he was fully healthy.

Second Line:
You could throw Benn on the third line and fill the LW spot on the 2nd line with a free agent (which is what I would prefer). Let's be honest, Benn would make a bad ass C on the checking line. Whether it's Pavelski or Seguin manning the center spot, you need Gurianov to get through the funk he's in and get back to the sharp-shooter he is.

Checking LIne:
Keep it the same and replace Comeau with Radulov who sparks the whole team with his energetic play and is a much better scoring threat than Comeau.

4th Line:
Honestly, a bunch of different options here.

These options are endless on how to shake-up these lines which is good just due to injuries or shaking it up to get out of a funk.

Defense:
Miro - Oleksiak
Klingberg - Lindell
Sekera - Harley

Time to bring up our #1 prospect in Harley and see what he's got. Need him to get experience as Klingberg and Sekera will both be free agents at the end of the 21-22 season.

Goalies:
Bishop
Otter

We will try to move Dobby this off season in a trade if he's not taken by Seattle. Otter needs to be the backup next season behind bishop to learn how to play as tall/big goalie. As much as I love Dobby, we obviously don't have room for him after this season. He could get us a decent draft pick or prospect in a trade and free up some more cap space. But honestly, who cares about a prospect or pick, we need that cap space to make sure we have enough room to sign both Miro and a free agent.

Coaching:
I love Bowness. I really do. As a man, as a leader of men, and I respect how much time he's put in. But he either needs to change up his system to capitalize on the speed and skill we will have, or he needs to go. I'm not saying we need to go back to playing like Lindy Ruff's team, but honestly we have much better defensemen and goalies than we did back then.


Anyway, opinions on my very uneducated thoughts?

And I might as well talk about who we expose to the Expansion draft. Here are the rules on the amount we can protect:

7 Forwards
3 Defensemen
1 Goalie

Or you can protect 8 skaters and 1 goalie. We will go the 7-3-1 route if we have enough players to put on the list. But if we can't come up with 10 players to protect, we'll just go the 8 route.

If a player has two years of service or less, or prospects just drafted, are not eligible to be drafted by Seattle and don't count against your protection cap. Here is our list:

Kiviranta
Robertson
Otter
Dellandrea
and pretty much everyone in our minor league system.

We have to expose two forwards and 1 defensemen who are under contract for the 2021-2022 season and played at least 40 games this year, or 70 combined over the past 2 season. So that pretty much guarantees Sekera will satisfy the 1 defenseman, and Faksa and Radulov will satisfy the two forwards. If there is a no movement clause we have to protect them. I could see us signing Dickinson or Comeau back for a one year deal just to expose them and protect Radulov. Or we could extend Oleksiak before the draft and protect him to get to 8 skaters if Hintz or Gurianov is considered to have less than 2 years of experience. Wasn't one of them considered a rookie last year?. So this is my list of who we will protect, and I will follow that up with who we will expose to the draft. And Seattle can only select one player from a team.

Protected:
Seguin - F
Gurianov - F
Hintz - F
Benn - F
Pavelski - F
Miro - D
Klingberg - D
Lindell - D
Bishop - G

Eligible Players for Seattle to Draft (the first four are ones that meet the requirements right now that are signed past the 21-22 season, the others are free agents and doesn't hurt losing them cause we could sign them right back after the draft):

Dobby - G
Faksa - F
Radulov - F
Sekera - D
-------
Comeau
Jason Dickinson
Rhett Gardner
Colton Point
Mark Pysyk
Justin Dowling
Nick Caamano
Tanner Kero
Taylor Fedun
Joel Hanley


And that's pretty much it if we don't sign guys to extension before the draft takes place. We could protect two more forwards if we wanted. So like I said, we could extend 2 forwards before the draft and protect them, or expose 1 of them and protect Radulov instead.

Out of those four, I have to hope that Seattle takes Dobby. Gives us 3 mil in cap space and allows Otter to be the backup and learn behind Bishop the next year or two before taking the starting role.

Radulov has a NMC so he has to be protected

jdgilberg said:

---

Radulov has a NMC so he has to be protected

---

If that's the case, we're gonna have to extend someone we currently have, otherwise we'd expose Pavelski, right? Cause Benn and Seguin both have NMCs. And you're definitely not exposing Hintz. I say, sign Dickinson to a two year extension and expose him. If he doesn't get chosen then he can be your fourth liner for the next two years and can fill in for injuries on the checking or second line when needed.

Woo boy the frustration is starting to set in with this team.

Hintz and Robertson is going to be a great combo to watch the next several years

Robertson is so good, very nice second period. And will start the third on the power play with about 1:45 left on it.

Yeah, I love how Robertson always has his stock on the ice and ready for those hot passes. More than Half the guys on the team would have whiffed on it.

ROBO has been quite the breakthrough player this season. I'm no savant, but what I expected to see from Kivi and Guri.

sburg2007 said:

---

ROBO has been quite the breakthrough player this season. I'm no savant, but what I expected to see from Kivi and Guri.

---

So he'll probably fall off a cliff next year...

Legal Custodian said:

---

---

Take care of the Hawks next week and maybe I'll say keep fighting through the 4 straight games with the Red Wings to see what happens there.

I don't see the Stars having much interest in losing Faksa and a long-term, team friendly contract.

CapFriendly has a cool tool to play with some of the scenarios. https://www.capfriendly.com/expansion-draft/seattle

I agree, I want Faksa here but we have to meet the requirement of exposing two forwards who are under contract for 21-22. We don't have that many options to do so unless we extend some guys before the draft to expose them instead.

For sure. I also think resigning Dickinson is a clear good option. And then thinking about one of Comeau/Cogliano on an extension.

I'd have to look at the games played, not sure if some of the other guys are close enough to the required games to qualify

Here we go!

The most improbable run to the Stanley Cup begins now!

eb93 said:

---

The most improbable run to the Stanley Cup begins now!

---

Remember the Blues Cup run 2 years ago! And I'll have what you're drinking.

The title goes through the sun belt!

Dougie Hamilton is a dingleberry.

Oettinger guesses and dives way too much. It's like he doesn't realize how big he is. Just stay big and don't commit

Honestly, I could go for a little bit of legend of Joel Kiviranta.

This is one of those Stars power plays where the announcer says full strength and the crowd says, "we always were."