Blaze of Glory: The Last of the Stars’ Young Guns Signs in Dallas

The Stars announced the signing of Roope Hintz to a three-year contract.

The $9.45 million contract looks like good value for the Stars. The contract is back-loaded, at $2M, $3M, and $4.45M annually.

While it doesn’t affect the cap hit, it does make life a little easier while the NHL is still struggling to work through the aftermath of Covid. A 3-year contract also means that his contract is separated from that of Denis Gurianov, allowing the Stars to stagger their contracts. Hintz will also be an RFA after 3 years, allowing the Stars to retain his rights with a suitable qualifying offer.

The signing of Hintz means that excepting Matthias Janmark and Corey Perry, the Stars have more or less kept their forward core intact from the run to the Stanley Cup Final this year.

They have also added depth signings in defense by bringing back Julius Honka and adding Mark Pysyk from Florida. 

It’s no secret that Roope brings speed and scoring ability to the Stars. He is one of their most potent offensive weapons, ranking only behind Denis Gurianov and Jamie Benn in xGAR and Radek Faksa in Corsi for points. He’s also a potent weapon on the power play. It’s the defensive side of his game that’s often overlooked, however. Statistically speaking, Hintz is also one of the Stars’ better forwards defensively.

Hintz’s time on ice has been a topic of much conversation among Stars fans this year, and it’s pretty noticeable that he has spent little time on the penalty-kill. It’s certainly easy to imagine that allowing Hintz to develop the defensive side of his game could lead to the Stars running a potent power kill as attempted increasingly by teams around the league.

Hintz is still a young player, drafted in the same year as the Stars’ another young gun Denis Gurianov, in a famously deep draft in 2015. At this point Stars’ fans have probably accepted that Jamie Benn will never again reach the heights of his Art Ross season (ironically also 2015) and the extent to which Tyler Seguin will play this season remains in doubt after a very serious hip injury that he played through in the play-offs.

The future of this team is as exciting as any in the league with the young core they have in place.

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