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Nystrom: Dealin'There are must wins. Then there are must wins. Then there are MUST WINS. I feel, moving forward, that that was a MUST WIN. The Stars had lost five straight and are now 4-6-1 in January.
Eerily, this season is looking a lot like last season. The hot start. The gradual decline as injuries mounted and the depth of the cash-strapped organization was truly tested.
Except, things are a little different.
Depth
As the injured reserve got crowded a year ago, more pressure was put on young players and existing veterans to make plays that simply weren't there. Being a team unable to lure quality free agents and depending on trades and developing youngsters on the fly, the team was unable to keep things up. They simply wore down. GM Joe Nieuwendyk went into the off-season with the same problems and the same budget. Letting Brad Richards walk opened up a lot of existing cash. He picked up Mike Ryder, Vern Fiddler, Radek Dvorak and Sheldon Souray all in free agency and took a flyer on Eric Nystrom in an early-season trade.
Those fivesome have combined for 44 points and 58 assists, led by Ryder with 32 points alone. Watching them, I think all of them have paid deep dividends for the Stars. None of them are lighting things up. Fiddler and Dvorak are serviceable forwards. Souray's helped solidify a leaky blue line. Ryder's been a top-of-the-line scorer. Nystrom's simply gravy.
Cash
What killed the Stars a year ago was the inability to make a mid-season trade to add talent. As noted above, there wasn't enough depth in the pool to maintain their early season form ... and they probably weren't as good as their early season form to begin with. Most teams would simply go out and pick themselves up a guy. Unfortunately, the NHL was running things and adding payroll was not in the cards. This season, Tom Gaglardi's purchased the team and is promising a payroll increase. We shall see Nieuwendyk's ability to incubate a good trade.
Trends, however, are creepy between 2010-11 and 2011-12.
Month | 2010-11 | 2011-12 |
|---|---|---|
October | 6-4-1 | 8-3 |
November | 8-4-1 | 6-6-1 |
December | 8-5-3 | 7-6 |
January | 8-2-1 | 4-6-1 |
30-15-6 | 25-21-1 |
Creepy might not be the word. The seasons are different in a lot of ways, but that doesn't make me feel better about the rest of 2011-12.
For one, the 2010-11 Stars maintained a good pace all the way through January. They were first in the Pacific for much of the season and looked prime.
Then injuries and the wear and tear of the season happened. The Stars wound up going 3-8-1 after the All-Star break in February and 5-4-5 in March. All the while, the Western Conference were just getting better.
The Stars are not in the place they were a year ago. They're worse, as far as the standings go. As I stated above, the Stars are actually in a much more advantageous place. They have guys at the rudder steering this ship. There is money to infuse. And they're not completely out of things. A nice little win streak instead of a lousy woeful post-break losing streak would go a long way.
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