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STARS MAILBAG: Discipline with Hitch, high praise for Shore, and Honka to the minors?

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Preseason results can be a bit misleading.

Last season the Colorado Avalanche went 6-0 in exhibition games, they followed that up with the NHL’s worst regular season record.

So diving too deep into preseason stats and results can be dangerous. However, there have been a couple encouraging preseason numbers from the Dallas Stars through five games.

– Kari Lehtonen has a .932 save percentage and 1.89 goals against average in three games. He had a rough start to the preseason and allowed three goals on his first three shots, but he’s settled into a stable situation and could be poised for a nice statistical season as the back-up.

– Brett Ritchie has a 22.2 percent shooting percent with two goals on nine shots. Ritchie is always going to be a high-volume shooter, so that isn’t a sustainable number in the regular season. But if he can have a similar number of shots to last season and convert close to 12 or 11 percent of the time (up from 9.6 percent last season) he could flirt with a 30-goal season.

– Tyler Pitlick has two goals in three preseason games. It appears he’s put his knee injuries behind him and he could be a valuable middle-six forward for Stars this season.

Ok, enough with preseason stats. Let’s get started with the mailbag…

It’s a more disciplined system and built on having more control of outcomes. That’s a better description than simply being better defensively.

Lindy Ruff played a style that consisted of trading chances — think Big 12 football on ice. Ken Hitchcock wants more control and less risk.

It’s been noticeable in practice throughout training camp. Hitchcock wants perfection on every drill, even from the coaches.

For example during training camp in Cedar Park assistant coach Stu Barnes wasn’t shooting pucks in for a breakout drill to Hitchcock’s liking. Hitchcock quickly got onto his assistant and demanded a better effort.

It worked. Barnes gripped the stick a bit more, like a nervous player, and the drill finished without any issues.

That attitude carries over to the games. While the Stars were free to trade chances under Ruff, Hitchcock’s teams are built around sustaining possession in the offensive zone (which is one reason Alexander Radulov was a great addition) and hammering down defensive details in their own zone.

The snarky answer is Oct. 6 against the Vegas Golden Knights. That’s when games count and they’ll have to perform.

In reality I think you can live with adjustment-based mistakes for four or five games. After that time you’d like to see the team clicking with the new coaching staff.

There is nothing else Julius Honka can prove in the AHL. More time spent in the AHL will just consist of Honka dominating play and at some point getting bored with the level of competition.

He does need to get better defensively, but that’s not going to happen in the minors. The level of competition isn’t high enough to test him. And with only two coaches in the AHL there isn’t enough time to spend holding Honka’s hand through hours of video and individual drills — they also have other players and prospects to worry about.

It’s not the most ideal situation, but maybe Honka would be better served as the healthy scratch in Dallas to start the season. That way he could work every day with an NHL coach that’s known for molding young defensemen — Rick Wilson — and watch the NHL games up close.

After a dozen games of that experiment put Honka in the NHL lineup and see what happens.

The maintenance program is basically a way to make sure a player is at 100 percent both health wise and fitness wise. Essentially Benn was doing off-ice work by himself and will skate by himself until the coaching staff deems him at 100 percent.

Hitchcock addressed that after practice Thursday, which you can read about in this story.

I’m going to let Hitchcock’s quotes stands for themselves rather than speculate further on why Benn is being put through the process.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, submit your questions.

That’s a great question and we still don’t know. Martin Hanzal and Devin Shore were on a line with Antoine Roussel in practice on Thursday, and I think that’s a grouping that would work well.

“Superstar” isn’t a fair label, but Shore does have a future as a reliable top-line player that can play any of the forward positions.

Hitchcock said on Thursday that he wants to play Shore as high as possible in the lineup and he was working on the second power play unit in practice.

It’s all building toward a potential breakout season for Shore after he played all 82 games last season.

Another note on Shore — he has that “captain vibe” and he was the captain as a junior at Maine. The Stars won’t have a vacancy at captain for another eight years or so, but Shore could be a candidate to wear an “A” sooner than later.

While it was nice in theory, Radek Faksa was never going to be truly comfortable on the wing next to Martin Hanzal.

Faksa played a bit of wing as a kid, but he’s been a full-time center since he was 11. On top of that it’s starting to look like the Stars will have a top line and three equal second or third lines.

While the Benn-Seguin-Radulov unit will get more minutes than most, I expect the second through fourth lines to have similar opportunities.

From my understanding the most recent development on Josh Anderson is that Blue Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen said that, “we are not looking to trade Josh Anderson.”

That being said, I wouldn’t rule out a trade if the Blue Jackets and Anderson are really at an impasse. I also don’t see a deal being worked out with Dallas. The Stars are already tight against the salary cap and they are fairly confident in group of young forwards that already have assembled.

If the Stars hadn’t signed Tyler Pitlick to a three-year contract this summer I think they’d likely be more interested in pursuing Anderson.

Based on play Remi Elie may be the leader in the clubhouse. In fact after RJ Umberger was released from his PTO on Wednesday, Elie was the player that got a stall in the locker room at the practice facility in Frisco.

At the same time Gemel Smith, Jason Dickinson, and Roope Hintz are still forced to use folding chairs in the middle of the locker room.

Elie also got a cameo on the first line in practice with Jamie Benn having a day off, and Hitchcock has talked about giving Elie a chance to play on Martin Hanzal’s line.

That being said, the Stars have made it clear that contracts will come into play. And if that’s the case it’s hard to ignore the body of work Adam Cracknell had last season. It’s easier for a general manager to hold an asset and send a waiver-exempt player like Elie to the AHL.

Curtis McKenzie hasn’t been bad, but other players have been better. On top of that McKenzie isn’t as strong as a skater as some of the other bottom-six candidates and that may hold him back.

Depending on how the Stars construct the final roster, McKenzie will likely be a frequent healthy scratch or could be waived and sent to the AHL.

So far, so good on the penalty kill. And that’s really all you can ask for at this point.

We haven’t really seen the penalty kill at full strength yet. Marc Methot hasn’t played that many preseason games and Martin Hanzal has yet to play in preseason, and they will both be key players on the top PK unit.

I do expect the penalty kill to be much better than last season. A combination of coaching (the Rick Wilson effect) and added players should help the Stars produce at least an above average penalty kill.

We just covered McKenzie in the last question and Cracknell is slightly ahead of him on the depth chart. Cracknell will likely be the 12th or 13th forward.

If Cracknell isn’t in the lineup he’s the perfect 13th forward.

He has the ideal attitude and is always the first player on the ice. Before each practice and morning skate Cracknell is often on the ice with goalie coach Jeff Reese warming up the goalies — that’s the type of player I want in the locker room, even if he’s only playing on a limited basis.

If you haven’t seen it, Ben Bishop has two different masks. Here they are:

Personally I like the one with the Texas state outline on the side and the 30 on the chin.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, submit your questions.

The fedora. I have three or four in my closet.

I moved to Texas for a job with the Kerrville Daily Times in 2012. It was my first full-time job after a six-month internship and worked there for six months before taking a job with the Cedar Park-Leander Statesman.

After 18 months with the CP-L Statesman my job and the paper were eliminated. Instead of looking for another job I decided to work as a full-time freelance writer (with the support of my wife) since I felt that would put me on the best path to someday cover hockey on a full-time basis.

I covered the AHL and the Texas Stars for four full seasons (that’s how this site was born) before an opportunity with NHL.com opened up before last season. That’s when I moved from the Austin area to DFW and started covering the NHL team.

There are other twists and turns in the story, but those are for another day.

They’ve looked solid in preseason and they have a year of experience together, which goes a long way. We often forget that Esa Lindell was still a rookie last season, so I expect him to take a nice step forward in his second full season.

The most important trade is figuring out the defense and finding value for Patrik Nemeth or Greg Pateryn, otherwise I don’t see any trades completed before November.

The bad news for Patrik Nemeth? He’s the odd defender out in Dallas.

The good news? He’s still going to make $945,000 either way on a one-way contract this season and with just 212 combined NHL and AHL games he doesn’t qualify as a veteran by AHL standards. Therefore Nemeth won’t complicate things for the Texas Stars with the vet rule.

(For a quick refresher, in the AHL teams can only have six veterans in the lineup each game. A veteran counts as a player that’s played 260 or more games in their career before the start of the season. This rule was put in place to keep the AHL as a developmental league.)

I’ve never had the chicken fingers from the concession stands. I’ll have to research this further.

RJ Umberger wasn’t fast enough to make the Stars, but with his NHL experience he could be an option for the United States at the Olympics. The biggest problem for Umberger is that his style doesn’t fit with the Olympic approach.

The bigger surface is built for patient players and speed. Umberger is neither fast nor patient, and for much of his career he was at his best when he was disrupting things for the opposing team.

That being said, it is slim pickings for the American Olympic team, so why not?

Shane Doan is formally retired, so I’m not sure if he’s interested in an Olympic opportunity.

Looking at the prospect pool there isn’t enough top-end skill at forward. There are some good hard-working players with moderate skill, but Roope Hintz is really the only true play-making center in the prospect pool that fits the mold of a future No. 1 center.

That’s where I would start in the draft. Granted, those players aren’t easy to find.

https://twitter.com/FlockofOxen/status/913413647304716289

Not that I know of.

While it may not be public, I’m sure Stars executives and coaches track Twitter. Heck, @t_rex20_ might even be Hitchcock’s secret handle.

Based on my observations of practice and games this would be my pairings if I were coaching:

Methot-Klingberg
Lindell-Johns
Hamhuis-Honka
Oleksiak

I’m not the coach, so it doesn’t matter.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, submit your questions.

Oleksiak has been better than last season, we can’t deny that. He just hasn’t been the top-four, world-beating defenseman that Hitchcock has talked about.

At least that’s my opinion from watching practices and preseason games. I might be missing something.

I also don’t think anyone would complain if Oleksiak turned into the player that the Stars thought he would be when they drafted him. And if Hitchcock has found a way to do that the Stars will be much better for it.

On your second question, I’m not sure if all three can be top-20 scorers. But having two of the three in the top-20 is a real possibility.

The fact Julius Honka might not make the NHL team. At the end of last season and during the summer Jim Nill talked on multiple occasions about Honka being ready for a big role in the NHL.

Even the first day of training camp Ken Hitchcock was singing his praises, now it appears that Honka will start this season either in the AHL or as a healthy scratch.

The Texas Stars should have a very good team this season.

Things still have to finalize, but the AHL team could be fielding an opening-night lineup that looks like this:

Remi Elie – Roope Hintz – Denis Gurianov
Gemel Smith – Jason Dickinson – Brian Flynn
Travis Morin – Justin Dowling – Marc McNeil
Cole Ully – Sheldon Dries – Greg Rallo

Gavin Bayruehter – Julius Honka
Dillon Heatherington – Brent Regner
Andrew Bodnarchuck – Ludwig Bystrom

Mike McKenna

Granted the Honka factor is a bit up in the air, but either way the Texas Stars have a team that should contend for a top-two spot in the Pacific Division.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, submit your questions.

No.

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