Tuesday Links: Rick Bowness Q&A

Bowness talks about the coaching staff’s plans for this year’s training camp. Plus, checking in on RFAs across the league, a look ahead to the 2022 NHL Entry Draft, and more.

With the opening days of Free Agency firmly in the rearview mirror, we are now in the dredges of the offseason. Nothing to do except wait for training camp, which will be as interesting as ever for the Dallas Stars.

Mike Heika sat down with head coach Rick Bowness to talk about the upcoming camp, which will be the first time the Stars’ coaching staff gets a good look at many of their new players:

“We don’t know [Jani] Hakanpaa, so we need to see a lot of him in camp. [Andreas] Borgman and [Alexander] Petrovic, we need to get to know them as well. That’ll go a long way in determining how it fits together. We have a very talented group of defensemen, and now we need to sort out how to best to use them.”

The defense has the most new faces, but many would argue the forwards need the most fine-tuning. With Tyler Seguin and Alexander Radulov expected to be healthy this year, the Stars’ Top 6 should improve, but it’s important to figure out who plays with whom:

“The only line I really have fixed in my head is the Robo-Hintz-Pavs [Jason Robertson-Roope Hintz-Joe Pavelski] line. After that, you start looking at duos and then try to see who the third guy could be on a line. Last year, we had Jamie [Benn] with Denis [Gurianov]. Do we go back to that? Should we have Seggy with Rads? So, who fits in with that? Jamie gives us the luxury of playing left wing or center. I know we would love to have him at center, but is that what works best? Tyler can play right wing or center. How do we make that work? That’s why camp is so important.”

You can read more from Bowness’s interview here.

---

Around the League

I haven’t looked into it yet, but seems like the Stars would do pretty well in this exercise, no?

It’s never too early to look ahead to the next NHL Entry Draft:

Despite a rough 2020-21 season, Carter Hart landed himself a solid extension from the Philadelphia Flyers:

…only to then be outdone by Igor Shesterkin and the New York Rangers:

Greg Wyshynski breaks down each team’s offseason behind the paywall:

Team Canada has their Olympic coaching staff in place, and it is stacked:

Finally, contract negotiations are getting — *ahem* — “wild” with Minnesota and Kirill Kaprizov. You hate to see it?