2015-16 record: 50-23-9 (109 points)
Lost to St. Louis in Conference semi-finals
Captain: Jamie Benn
A top-flight team in the regular season thanks to the offense, the Dallas Stars were ultimately undone in the playoffs thanks to a defense that still needs work and goaltending that only gave back modest returns on a $10.4 million investment for both goalies. Still, the Stars have considerable talent to work with and with a pipeline that is giving them a fairly wide open window of opportunity to win it all, expecting the Stars to make a Stanley Cup run isn't out of the question, health willing.
Everything that the Stars owe to their success begins with offense, and despite only having John Klingberg on the blue line that provides any offense, the front lines score in bunches. Jamie Benn topped 40 goals while Jason Spezza and Tyler Seguin scored north of the 30 goal barrier. That trio is good enough to carry the team offensively, but there is good depth in terms of players that can score, and provided Seguin is healthy, something that wasn't the case in the playoffs where he missed all but one game, the Stars can cover for some of their deficiencies in their own end. The blue line is going to be breaking in two new faces from within in Stephen Johns and Esa Lindell, as well as Dan Hamhuis via free agency. While it remains to be seen if the moves add up to a better defense, it can't be worse than Alex Golligoski, who was a disaster in his own end, something that was exposed in the playoffs. If there's any position that the Stars truly need to address though, it's in goal. The $10.4 million duo of Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi only produced moderate results, as their combined 2.78 GAA and .905 save percentage in the regular season may have been good enough to skate by, but it fell apart in the playoffs, as seemingly neither is capable of carrying the mail for the long playoff grind. When it comes to special teams, the offensive sparks carried over to the power play, where they ranked fourth. Of course, if they drew a few more penalties, that would make it even more deadly. The penalty kill was in the top third of the league, a product of the overall team speed that is capable of making teams pay if they're asleep at the wheel.
Prediction: 1st in the Central Division
The pieces are in place offensively, and certainly, they got bigger defensively. Whether the latter got any better will be answered during the season, but until the goaltending situation gets solved, it may be the one thing that holds them back from hoisting the Stanley Cup in June.
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