The Dallas Stars were busy on Saturday and signed five players as NHL free agency opened.
-Center Martin Hanzal to a three-year $14.25-million contract.
-Right wing Tyler Pitlick to a three-year, $3-million contract.
-Center Brian Flynn to a one-year, two-way contract.
-Goalie Mike McKenna to a one-year, two-way contract.
-Patrik Nemeth to a one-year, $945,000 contract extension.
Others moves could still be in the works and Stars general manager Jim Nill said he’s still talking with free agents, but did add that he’d be comfortable starting the season with the way his team is right now.
“We’re talking to all the free agents out there,” Nill said when asked about potentially signing UFA Alexander Radulov. “Whether we are in the running or not, we don’t know. That’s up to the player and their agents. There is numerous players out there that we are still talking to.”
Hanzal was the big prize for Dallas on Saturday.
“When you look at your roster and you’re building your team you always want to be strong down the middle,” Nill said. “Martin is a player we’ve watched for a long time. With him being in Arizona and then in Minnesota, a hard guy to play against.”
“Our players never enjoyed playing against him,” Nill added. “When we saw we had the opportunity to maybe acquire him and add to our center depth, anytime you can be strong down the middle it’s important for your team.”
Hanzal’s signing adds a nice element to the Stars, but will create some interesting lineup decisions this fall for the Stars, who have a large grouping of centers and by conventional wisdom where looking for a winger rather than a center in free agency.
Nill said he’ll leave those decisions up to Stars head coach Ken Hitchcock.
“That’s the intriguing part about Martin, you can play him against the best players on any team,” Nill said. “He can matchup against every team’s top center iceman … he gives the coaching staff a lot of different options, and he talked to Ken about that.”
Nill was also pleased with the other signings, including Pitlick who could turn into a bit of a steal for the Stars.
“He’s just starting to get his feet wet in the NHL right now,” Nill said. “He’s had some tough luck with injuries and I think theres a lot, between myself and my scouting staff, we think there is a lot of upside potential there.”
Building depth
On his conference call Nill also addressed adding Flynn and McKenna.
“Just adds some depth to our organization,” Nill said. “As we saw last year we got devastated with injuries. And you can never have enough to depth. (Flynn) was an important signing, another versatile player. He can play all forward positions, skates well, strong on the puck.”
Flynn could potentially be the 13th forward in the NHL, while it looks like he could also be a member of the AHL-affiliated Texas Stars.
McKenna will be one of AHL goalies with the Texas Stars, and provides an insurance policy in case of injury to Ben Bishop and Kari Lehtonen.
“The other two guys we have in our organization are pretty young,” Nill said. “We want to have a third guy that can come up and play some games for us.”
That means McKenna will be paired with either Landon Bow or Philippe Desrosiers in the AHL, while one of the younger goalies will get the starting role with the ECHL-affiliated Idaho Steelheads.
Juggling defenders
With Nemeth’s signing the Stars now have eight NHL defenders under contract and that will grow to nine when Jamie Oleksiak is signed.
I asked Nill about how he plans to handle that after the Stars traded for Marc Methot earlier this week.
“We’ll let that evolve,” Nill said. “We’re still looking to make some more moves. If we don’t we know we’re coming to camp probably with nine defenseman and it’s good competition.”
Nill likes to keep things under wraps, but I would expect him to make a trade at some point to move a defender.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.