The Dallas Stars goaltending situation wasn supposed to be this complicated. With the impending expansion draft, Dallas would protect number one netminder Ben Bishop, exposing Anton Khudobin to be picked by the Seattle Kraken. Jake Oettinger would be there, waiting in the wings; either as a backup or as the number one with the Texas Stars in the unlikely case where Khudobin wasn selected by Seattle. That was the thinking when the Stars signed Khudobin to a three year https://www.denverproshoponline.com/Trey_Marshall_Flag-689, $10 million deal October 9th of 2020. After an up-and-down season, Khudobin is no longer the obvious selection for the Kraken. In the meantime, Oettinger put together an impressive rookie season, making his case for a full-time NHL job. With Bishop taking a bit longer than expected to rehabilitate, Dallas has no obvious answers about what their netminding tandem will look like to start the 2021-2022 season. How this works out has added significance for the Stars this coming year. The leadership group is past their productive peak. Tyler Seguin hits 30 next January, and Jamie Benn will be 32 next month. By that time, Alexander Radulov will be 35 and Joe Pavelski will be 37. This core group of forwards has been responsible for all the heavy lifting up front for most of the last five years. Dallas has some flashy young talent, especially Roope Hintz and Jason Robertson. With the morass of injuries to the front line this past season, they demonstrated the potential to carry the team for a new generation of Stars. But make no mistake: this is still the team of Benn, Seguin, Radulov and Pavelski - at least for this coming year. Throw in a summer of rest, Rick Bowness and his expiring contract, and 2021-2022 looks like the make or break year for this group. Some around here may think that a change is overdue; that an overreaction to an injury-filled season took an entertaining, high-flying Lindy Ruff scoring machine and turned it into a grind-it-out snooze fest under Ken Hitchcock, Jim Montgomery and Bowness. I not here to argue that point. All I saying is that this coming year will be the culmination (or well deserved end) of the latest version of these Stars. What this team claims as its identity beyond next year is up in the air. One thing we do know is the identity of this group, and like it or not, everything that the team does this offseason needs to be seen in the light of making this coming year a final payoff for the team that wee come to love (and, sometimes, hate). It Stanley Cup or Bust, and they just might have the talent to do it if everything falls into place https://www.denverproshoponline.com/Brian_Dawkins_Pillow_Cover-303. Given the nature of the coming year, the decisions about netminders take on added significance. Can a team that is all-in for the year risk having Jake Oettinger as their true number oneOf course, if Bishop has a setback in his rehabilitation, much of this becomes moot, but timing is everything. If the events around the 2017 expansion draft are any indication, July is going to be hectic. Teams will spend their time leading up to the July 17 deadline for submission of the official player exposure list making sure that they are compliant to the draft rules. For Dallas, this means getting one more eligible forward onto the roster. The following week will include not only the expansion draft, but also a slew of other activity as teams pull their rosters together. If the status of Bishop isn known by then, Dallas is going to need to cross their fingers and make some educated guesses. If August 1st rolls around and the Stars plans for goal are not set, the pickings are going to be slim. Assuming that Bishop is a go, the absolute conservative take would be to keep Bishop and Khudobin https://www.denverproshoponline.com/Austin_Schlottmann_Flag-277, sending Oettinger to Cedar Park. This move costs Dallas $2. 4 million in cap space, plus whatever developmental setback Oettinger gets from playing against AHL competition instead of NHL competition. Stars fans may riot, but this scenario may be the one most likely to get the team the Cup. Alternatively, the Stars could look to move either Bishop or Khudobin. They both have no-trade clauses in their contracts, Bishop with a 10-team no-trade list and Khudobin with a four-team list. Given the opportunities out there, these can be overcome, especially given some of the teams that either have cap issues or are in a rebuild and would be helped by dumping a contract for an aging veteran. A few candidates that could be targeted are discussed below. Tampa Bay LightningThe Lightning are an Andrei Vasilevskiy injury away from being a great team that is betrayed by sub-standard netminding. They could use a quality backup, but one who doesn break the bank. They could use cap relief, and Tyler Johnson has been playing third line minutes on a $5 million dollar contract that runs through 2024 Royce Freeman Pillow Cover. There are some issues with the timing of Tampa Bay in the playoffs and their expansion eligibility list, but a Khudobin-Johnson deal is as close to win-win as there is out there. Dallas can afford the money and they need a forward. Tampa Bay needs a backup and they could use the cap space. Washington CapitalsWashington needs a quality backup, and they seem to want the cap space to try to re-sign Alex Ovechkin. TJ Oshie has a 10-team no-trade clause, his contract is $5. 75 million through 2025, but this would be manageable for the Stars. The contract is too long, but Oshie productivity hasn fallen off a cliff yet. In addition, Oshie is a finisher, something that Dallas has been missing. The real question will be whether the Capitals believe they can sacrifice Oshie and their own team competitive window to obtain a quality backup netminder when there likely to be some left on the market once all the deck chairs are rearranged this summer. Ottawa SenatorsEvgeni Dadonov didn have the best numbers in his first year with the Senators, and Ottawa may not want to pay the extra cash that he is owed given their young core and their frugal nature. Matt Murray isn cutting it as Ottawa number one and they could use the help. The Senators could easily be on a no-trade list, so this could be a non-starter, but Dadonov has two years left on a $5 million cap hit deal that is heavy on cash in the last two years. Calgary Flames Calgary needs a backup, and Milan Lucic is just the kind of player that the old-school Stars would want to bolster their fourth line. It a complicated transaction, since Lucic has an 8-team trade list, and his contract already includes $750,000 in retained salary from Edmonton, but it a deal that ends in 2023 and the cost would be just over $5 million. Plus, Lucic wasn terrible last year()Are any of these moves that the Stars could make a purely hockey move (Stars critics say Lucic, but you know the answer is Johnson. ) It doesn really matter. Circumstances have changed, and Dallas needs to move forward as best they can Bradley Chubb Flag. That means two goaltenders, and given the timelines, the sooner the better. Patience may get the team to a point when they can make the ideal decision, but the longer the team waits, the more limited their options will become. No decision carries absolutely no risk. This season the Stars are at a crossroads for the franchise, and the wrong decision (and to be honest, just dumb luck) could mean the end of an era. That said, the team needs to roll the dice and move forward by making best guesses, not by waiting for all of the data to come in. And for the record, I think that Oettinger is ready for whatever the Stars throw at him.
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The Lakers' defense of their 2019-20 NBA title didn't go as planned. The team had an up-and-down 2020-21 NBA season and failed to advance out of the first round of the playoffs.However, LeBron James thinks that the team will be better off for the upcoming season. LeShaun Sims Jersey Why? Because something has changed within the team: the energy. That's something that the Lakers largely lacked last season."Last year after coming off the bubble it literally took everything away from you. Any little bit of energy that you had, it was completely gone when we left there," at the Lakers' second day of training campon Thursday."To come back into the season with the quick start that we had, kind of the life of Ryan Succop Jersey the party was a little bit, just like, it was just kind of stale. You know, rightfully so. Guys just didn't have an opportunity to get a mental break."MORE: Indeed, they didn't. The Lakers had just 72 days off between the end of the 2020 NBA Finals on Oct. 11 and the start of the 2020-21 NBA season on Dec. 22. The 2019-20 season was brought to a grinding halt in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so pushing the 2020 NBA playoffs back into September and October was a nece sity if the league wanted to finish the season.Still, Jurrell Casey Jersey it left the Lakers fatigued during the next season, and both James and fellow superstar Anthony Davis mi sed time with injuries during the condensed schedule. That contributed to the Lakers performing below expectations, but James is happy about the energy with which the Lakers are attacking the upcoming season."You could definitely feel the energy shift a lot more in this season the first two practices compared to last," James said.GREER: It's not a surprise Adoree' Jackson Jersey that the energy surrounding the Lakers has changed. They made quite a few changes to their roster during the 2021 offseason. Chief among them was theacquisition of former MVPand triple-double maven Ru sell Westbrook via a trade with the Wizards.Other experienced playerssuch as Rajon Rondo, DeAndre Jordan, Kent Bazemore, Carmelo Anthony, Malik Monk and Kendrick Nunn were added during the roster overhaultoo.And James has done a great job of helping integrate those players into the Lakers' system so far, as coach Frank Vogel detailed." Marcus Mariota Jersey He sets a great tone for attentivene s," Vogel said of James. "Hanging on every word the coaches are saying and making sure he's understanding it, executing it at the right level. I think that sets a tone for the rest of the guys absorbing what we're trying to get through to them. It starts there. ..."If there's a detail that needs to be cleaned up, he's very vocal in those situations, too. But I think if his voice is hoarse, it's because of the intensity of today's practice. These guys really, really got after it today. So early in training camp, to see guys playing that hard and that physical is a great sign with the talent that we have."MORE: The Lakers should continue to bring that energy. After all, they will have had 138 days to rest between their early playoff exit and the first game of the upcoming season. That's Derrick Henry Jersey nearly double what they had before last year's title defense.