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STARS MAILBAG: Radulov's locker room impact, defensive questions, and depth

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The mailbag is loaded this week and I can’t think of a worthy intro at this moment, so let’s get started…

Comment from discussion Mailbag, time for questions.

Alexander Radulov is the type of player you want on your hockey team, and that has nothing to do with his all-world skill.

Both on and off the ice he’s one of the hardest working players, which tends to rub off on his in teammates. He also brings a “fun energy” to the rink — it’s obvious Radulov loves being on the ice, and his teammates have taken notice.

Greg Pateryn, who played with Radulov in Montreal before the trade Dallas last season, explains a bit more.

“Not only in practice, but in games too,” Pateryn said. “When you’re on the ice with him he’s flying out there. Offensive zone, defensive zone, he wants the puck and he wants to take the game over. That’s something that’s contagious when you see somebody working hard out there. You pick it up a little bit and I think everyone picks it up, even the guys on the bench get going more.

“Being with him for a little more than half a year last year, I got to see that first hand,” Pateryn added. “He’s a fun guy to play with and he’s a good guy to have around.”

Nick Caamano is still in training camp, so there is a chance of him making the team.

However, if we look at it realistically there isn’t much space for the 19-year-old in the NHL lineup. Even if he does make the team it would likely be in an in-and-out of the lineup role, and in that case it’s better for the player to have him playing big minutes in the OHL with the Flint Firebirds.

In my ideal situation Caamano would be eligible to play in the AHL this season and could be the first call-up in case of injury, but that isn’t possible with the CHL-NHL agreement.

I’ve made nice progress on 100 Things Stars Fans Need to Know & Do Before They Die and it’s on track for it’s October 2018 release.

I still have the majority of the writing to finish over the next three months, but doing the research and compiling information, which makes up roughly 90 percent of the project, is essentially completed.

It should be close to finalized in December, and around that time I’ll see what I can do about a preview or potentially sharing a snippet from the book.

That’s a television rights situation, only Fox Sports Southwest can air the Stars game on TV or internet streaming. FSSW could broadcast the games if they wanted to, but they have decided not to.

It’s early and every team feels good in preseason, but the Stars have actually done a nice job of addressing some areas of concern already.

The players seem to have bought into Hitchcock’s system, the team is healthy, and players that were question marks have had impressive training camps.

Can the Stars maintain that going forward? Consistency is going to be paramount, particularly on defense.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, time for questions.

You can’t really judge too much off the first preseason game when it comes to the actual NHL season. It’s still early, players have only been together for four days at the time, and they are still working to build chemistry.

Those questions you point out should be sorted as we move forward, if they are still having those problems in the sixth preseason game you can be worried.

Stephen Johns had a nice game on Tuesday paired with Marc Methot. He moved the puck well and he looked confident in all three zones.

Oleksiak struggled a bit. The first goal came on a defensive breakdown by Oleksiak and he’s still trying to pinch in too much offensively — a role he doesn’t need to play under Hitchcock.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, time for questions.

They’d likely be looking for a draft pick or a mid-level prospect. The problem is they aren’t likely going to get that return value on this group of defensemen, especially with it being well known they may be forced to waive one of them either way.

They’ll have to use waivers since NHL teams can only carry 23 players on the active roster. Whichever defenseman is waived will give us an interesting insight into their perceived league-wide value.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, time for questions.

Preseason isn’t that long so the teaching and adjustment period will continue into the first part of the regular season, but you’d like to think after a dozen games or so the young defenders that make the team will be comfortable and at a level you can trust every night.

No one really stood out in an overly bad way, and it was a really difficult game to judge with all of the penalties.

However, I did have a couple key takeaways on certain players:

— Mattias Janmark looked very good in his first game back. All the signs for a full recovery are encouraging.
— Nick Caamano is making the most of his opportunities, and he could form a nice future line with Gurianov and Hintz.
— Ben Bishop’s puck handling is going to make the Stars a better team. He does a nice job controlling the play and setting up breakouts effectively.
— Antoine Roussel is a pest and still extremely annoying to play against.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, time for questions.

Janmark’s ability to look as good as he has. I know we keep tempering expectations, but he’s really done a nice job getting back to what looks like full speed.

It could be the ideal fit for Kari Lehtonen. His biggest struggles have come when he has had to be the No. 1 goalie and been forced to perform in key moments.

When you think of Lehtonen’s top highlights they’ve typically come in low-pressure games or moments. Lehtonen is going to play primarily low-pressure games if Bishop remains healthy and he’s going to have a defense that bunkers down more when he gets the start — that’s a combination that could lead to some nice numbers for Lehtonen.

Remi Elie likely won’t start the season in the NHL, but he is in that mix for the first call-up. Elie had a nice showing at the end of last season, but with a new coaching staff he needed to have a stronger training camp to earn an opening night NHL roster spot.

Thursday’s preseason game was a big opportunity for R.J. Umberger to prove he belongs and his performance had mixed reviews — he wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t good either.

It’s looking increasingly unlikely based on his play, but Hitchcock has said he will give Umberger multiple preseason games so it’s still possible.

Yes, the drop pass is here to stay. The Stars have worked on it quite a bit in practice and assistant coach Stu Barnes, who runs the power play, says it can be a valuable weapon this season. The key, and something I’ve talked about before, is adding more diversity to the power play and not using the drop pass on every zone entry.

No, they will still use a four forward alignment on the first power play. That’s what they’ve worked on throughout training camp, while the second unit is a more traditional 3-2 setup.

We have to keep in mind that the first preseason game against St. Louis was against a lineup of younger players without much NHL experience, so take that with a grain of salt when considering the Stars face-off success.

And on Thursday against the Avalanche the Stars struggled in face-offs when they were the younger team going up against veterans.

Overall face-offs should be a strength of this team. Martin Hanzal’s addition will be a big boost in that area, while the top line has a nice duo of Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin that have thrived in face-offs on their strong side.

It’s hard to put an exact number on it, but the Stars should win more than 50 percent of their face-offs this season.

That’s simply their prerogative. They payed for TV rights, so they have the right to not show the games.

The game on Sept. 26 against the Minnesota Wild will have a radio broadcast.

I’m usually pretty comfortable in the press box, I’m also wearing a suit so that may impact my body temperature.

I also drink way too much coffee during a game, it tends to keep me warm.

I need someone who was at the first game as a fan to help me with this one. I don’t eat the concourse food unless we are sampling one of the specialty burgers. We just had the typical chicken fingers in the press box during the first preseason game.

After my podcast with Mike McKenna on Thursday I’d like to see him design a speciality burger for the AAC.

(You can listen to podcast here.)

Breakfast for dinner was always my favorite media meal when I worked in Cedar Park. They actually took it off the menu for a couple seasons, I’m glad to see it return to it’s proper spot in the rotation.

A Marc Methot and John Klingberg pairing may have been the assumption at the time of the trade, but as I wrote Wednesday Hitchcock is looking for a different partner for Methot.

You can read that story here.

That’s why they signed Mike McKenna, as an insurance policy that could play in the NHL if needed. He’s spent most of his career in the AHL, but McKenna is a top-tier goalie at that level and a more than capable NHL back-up if needed for an extended period of time.

It’s not Stars related, but earlier in my career I had a couple interview subjects that used choice language and to an extent pointed it at me. With that in mind Ondrej Vala using “mother f*cker” is rather tame.

It’s certainly a possibility. We also can’t ignore Niklass Hansson and John Nyberg, a pair of prospects that could become part of the future.

There are parts of Dylan Heatherington’s game that compare well to Colton Parayko, but that’s really only in the defensive zone — both are big and physical defenders that play with a a more old-school vibe.

Heatherington isn’t as much as an offensive weapon like Parayko and doesn’t have the Grade-A shot from the point.

Heatherington could be a solid depth defender for Dallas next season, but it’s unfair to compare him to Parayko and assume he’ll be able to reach that level.

Justin Dowling will likely play NHL games this season, but it likely will be close to the number of games he had in 2015-16 when he played nine with Dallas.

That’s caused by the numbers game with the roster. The Stars should be healthier this season and there will be a healthy competition in the AHL to be that first call-up. Over the course of the season that internal competition is just going to get more difficult as Roope Hintz and Denis Gurianov get more comfortable on North American ice.

It’s hard to guess what Hitchcock will do, especially after it was announced he would retire after this past season in St. Louis.

Either way they won’t do a coach-in-waiting. It doesn’t work and creates an atmosphere where it’s too easy to undermine the coach, and that wouldn’t work with Hitchcock’s coaching style that requires total buy in from the players.

It was certainly discussed as a Plan B, but throughout their free agency conversations the Stars were pretty confident Radulov would ultimately come to Texas.

It was a really nice play. Alexander Radulov did a nice job holding the puck down low and drew defenders attention before passing to Julius Honka. Honka took a bit of a shot pass looking for the deflection, it was a nice example of what the power play could look like this season.

Janmark isn’t going to play in Cedar Park. He’s had enough conditioning in training camp and the preseason games.

No, I don’t consider him a prospect anymore.

From BigZee in the comments section:

Mailbag-How come everyone is surprised that Justin Dowling is so good? He’s always been good. He’s been a plus player every year in Cedar Park and he has pretty nice PPG numbers. Every time he’s come back from an injury it’s like he never missed a beat.

It’s not that much of a surprise that he’s had a strong camp, frankly I expected it after his limited work in the NHL last season.

However there is a perception of unexpected excellence thanks to his draft status (he was undrafted) and he’s working to impress a coaching staff that doesn’t have any past history with the player.

Lady Byng and Vezina are enjoying the home we bought this summer. The house has a decent yard and, seemingly more importantly, open space inside for them to sprint around while my wife is working.

My advice for those moving with dogs? Take them for lots of walks. That way they know it’s their neighborhood and have a sense that this is actually their new home.

I don’t think they make a mascot costume big enough for that. If Oleksiak is 6-foot-7, the mascot costume would likely have to be at least 7-foor-2.

I suppose this would work in theory. It would also save time on paper work since the Stars wouldn’t have to sign an amateur to a tryout contract for him or her to dress as the back-up goalie.

Yes, I believe adding Jamba Juice to the fold is the reason the Stars have such great odds of winning the cup according to Vegas bookmakers.

Comment from discussion Mailbag, time for questions.

The ability to teleport. That way I could live anywhere in the world and not have to worry about commuting or traffic.

Looks good now, but we’ll have to see what happens. Looks good now, but we’ll have to see what happens. Looks good now, but we’ll have to see what happens. Looks good now, but we’ll have to see what happens.

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