Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
Why Your NHL Team Rocks: Dallas To Edmonton
Dallas Stars
The Dallas Stars are going to be an extremely fun NHL team to watch in 2015-2016. Their offense is basically a video game. Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn, Jason Spezza and Patrick Sharp should lead an offense that will be able to come back from virtually any deficit. Their defense was a concern in 2014-2015, but they did add Johnny Oduya. Oduya should stabilize the blue line for Dallas. Regarding their goaltending: there are far worse methods to getting above average goaltending than signing two guys who should be above average and riding the hot hand. I don’t 100% agree with it, but I think it’ll work for the Stars because of their offense. John Klingberg had a heck of a rookie season. I’m really excited to see what he does with an even better offense. Win or lose Stars fans, the 2015-2016 NHL season should be a really fun one.
Detroit Red Wings
Similar to the Blackhawks, the Red Wings have an impressive core. Offensive dynamo Mike Green joins Niklas Kronwall, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg. The core might be starting to get old, but I think that young guys like Tomas Tatar and Gustav Nyquist could give them a nice boost. I think 2015 is when both of those guys take their game to the next level. Jimmy Howard is not far removed from being a very solid goaltender. I think he has a rebound season. While they did lose Mike Babock as their head coach, perhaps it was time for a change. The Red Wings are one of my dark horse picks to win the Stanley Cup in the 2015-2016 NHL season.
Edmonton Oilers
Your front office is finally doing the rebuild right. The Oilers have been the laughing stock of the NHL for so long. The Oilers, led by Connor McDavid, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Cam Talbot, Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall, Nail Yakupov, Andrej Sekera and new head coach Todd McLellan are going to quickly change that. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will the Oilers. However, this is probably the most optimistic that I’ve been about the Oilers in a very long time. There’s a ton of talent there. That’s undeniable. They have a front office that is desperate to win. Mix that with a head coach who knows what he’s doing and a 2015-2016 playoff run is not completely out of the question.
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