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2026-27 season preview

Dallas Stars

46-28-10102 pts7th of 32
Goals for
3.14
9th in the league
Goals against
2.82
2nd in the league
Power play
28.6%
2nd in the league

Kodo projects the Dallas Stars for 46-28-10 (102 pts), carried by the 3rd-ranked projected goal prevention. In a points-only league, the fantasy value runs through Mikko Rantanen and Jason Robertson on PP1. 3 core skaters project to rise and 3 to slip. Jake Oettinger is the projected starter.

Your categories · using the preset above
Regression watch
finishing/on-ice luck ran hot — expect some pullback off last year's line
Buy-low
underlying shot/chance rates outran the results — a discount vs name value
The crease
Jake Oettinger
Jake Oettinger projects the crease (~46 starts), but Casey DeSmith (~36) makes it more timeshare than lock
Contents · 12 sections

Latest

lines, injuries and roster moves 1 / 12 ›
ReportedRoope Hintz — Roope Hintz said he’s feeling fine and he thinks he got lucky that the injury wasn’t worse. · @Lassimak ↗2026-10-03
ReportedMatt Duchene — Don’t worry, Matt Duchene still got to wear his cowboy hat to opening night. https://t.co/2aUdqSUyfK · @Lassimak ↗2026-10-03
ReportedJake Oettinger — It's #TexasHockey vs. #stlblues tonight for Opening Night at the AAC (8 p.m. CT). Jake Oettinger vs. Joel Hofer @DLLS_Stars Pregame Show with @CraigludwigDLLS, @samnestler & me begins at 7:15 p.m. 📺: https://t.co/W8INAwoyoM #STLvsDAL | @DLLS_Sports · @OwenNewkirk ↗2026-10-02
ReportedJustin Hryckowian — PP1: Heiskanen, Rantanen, Robertson, Johnston, Hintz PP2: Harley, Lindell, Hryckowian, Benn, Seguin · @samnestler ↗2026-10-02
ReportedRoss Johnston — Stars morning skate lines ahead of STL: Hryckowian - Johnston - Rantanen Robertson - Hintz - Seguin Steel - Hyry - Benn Bäck - Faksa - Kiviranta Harley - Heiskanen Lindell - Lundkvist Bichsel - Myers Oettinger DeSmith · @samnestler ↗2026-10-02
Each item names its source. Kodo's own projected line changes are not reported here.

Where this team sits

last season vs projection‹ 2 / 12 ›
25-2626-27Change
Goals for3.339th3.1410th-0.19▼1
Goals against2.712nd2.823rd+0.11▼1
Power play28.62nd23.802nd=-4.80~
Penalty kill80.313th78.818th-1.49▲5
Faceoffs51.67th51.616th+0.01▲1
Points percentage0.6833rd0.6077th-0.076▼4
How these projections are made
Both bars share one scale per row — the wider of the two league ranges — so a bar that moves is a number that moved. The grey tick is that column's league average, and the arrow is the change in league rank. Goals-against and expected-goals-against rank ascending, so low is good and green always means improved.
Goals for, goals against and points percentage come from the roster: summed player projections over the real 26-27 schedule, last season's expected goals against regressed toward the league and adjusted for projected goaltending, and a game-by-game simulation of that schedule.
The special teams are projected from how much each number actually carries over year to year, measured across 298 team-season pairs going back to 2010-11. The power play uses one prior season shrunk 0.36; the penalty kill uses three, weighted .5/.3/.2 and shrunk 0.38. Special teams barely persist, so a league-worst penalty kill is mostly bad luck and comes most of the way back, while the faceoff dot is a repeatable team skill. How far a club moves depends on how far from the mean it started: Vancouver sits near league average on both the power play and the faceoff dot and barely shifts, while Edmonton's 30.6% power play comes back to the middle and this penalty kill, worst in the league, is the biggest riser of all 32.
The penalty kill averages three seasons because one measures it so badly. Split a single season's spread into ability and sampling noise — a kill rate is a binomial over about 250 opportunities, so the noise is known rather than guessed — and only 33% of the gap between clubs is real. Divide the year-over-year correlation by that and the ability underneath comes out near 1.0: penalty killing is almost perfectly persistent and merely hard to see in one season. The cure for a noisy measurement is more of it, and three seasons beat one by 4.3% out of sample. Because averaging reorders clubs, that row's rank is a real forecast; the rows marked = are single-season regressions, which compress the values but keep them in order, so their rank is last season's by construction and only the value is a prediction.
A roster-aware faceoff model was built and rejected on the evidence. Draw counts are not stored, but they can be recovered exactly from the per-game percentages, and with real draws a club's number reconstructs from its own centres. It still does not predict better: given a club's first half to learn from and even handed the second half's draw distribution, it scored 2.24 against the plain regression's 2.26 across 32 clubs, and the best blend of the two puts almost no weight on it. A team's faceoff percentage already carries who takes its draws. Expected goals has no team projection at all, so that row shows last season alone.

How last season went

in quarters — where the season was won and lost‹ 3 / 12 ›
They held about the same pace all year — -3 points of win percentage between the first quarter and the last.
Oct–Nov10-09 – 11-18
60%12-8
for3.30
against2.85
Nov–Jan11-20 – 01-01
62%13-8
for3.67
against2.67
Jan–Mar01-04 – 03-03
65%13-7
for3.45
against2.60
Mar–Apr03-06 – 04-15
57%12-9
for3.19
against2.90

Schedule shape

games per week and per month, light nights, back-to-backs‹ 4 / 12 ›
Light nights
31%11th
26 of 84 games
Four-game weeks
628th
3 weeks of two or fewer
Back-to-backs
1326th
roughly one backup start each
Playoff-week games
931st
over 3 weeks · 1 back-to-back
Games per week
2026-09-28on light nights2027-04-05
Games by month
Oct*
14
Nov
12
Dec
13
Jan
16
Feb
10
Mar
13
Apr*
6
* part of a month — the season opens and closes mid-month.

Projected lineup

lines, pairs and both special teams, with what each man projects for‹ 5 / 12 ›
Lineup notes
This is the lineup the club can ice on opening night, not its best-case group. A player expected to miss more than the opening month is left out and his slot goes to whoever takes it — he keeps his projection below, he is out of the lineup, not out of the season.
Matt Duchene — Lower Body: IR. Expected to be out until at least Oct 25 · still projected 71 games
Cameron Hughes — Upper Body: IR. Expected to be out until at least Oct 5 · still projected 4 games
Projected ice time totals 298.1 of the 300 skater-minutes a game has. Power play 3.16′ on the first unit, 1.79′ on the second; the kill 2.35′, 1.67′ and 1′ across three units — all measured.Change this lineup →

Forward lines

L1
LW
Justin Hryckowian
29 pts · 17.6′
13G · 16A · 85SOG · 119HIT · 43BLK
C
Wyatt Johnston
89 pts · 18.0′
43G · 46A · 226SOG · 53HIT · 51BLK
RW
Mikko Rantanen
99 pts · 18.0′
32G · 67A · 191SOG · 55HIT · 39BLK
L2
LW
Jason Robertson
96 pts · 16.6′
40G · 55A · 276SOG · 55HIT · 37BLK
C
Roope Hintz
66 pts · 16.6′
26G · 40A · 162SOG · 67HIT · 33BLK
RW
Tyler Seguin
32 pts · 15.2′
13G · 19A · 77SOG · 34HIT · 13BLK
L3
LW
Sam Steel
31 pts · 15.7′
12G · 20A · 83SOG · 74HIT · 29BLK
C
Colin Blackwell
10 pts · 13.9′
4G · 7A · 60SOG · 96HIT · 31BLK
RW
Jamie Benn
38 pts · 14.0′
14G · 25A · 89SOG · 86HIT · 30BLK
L4
LW
Oskar Bäck
9 pts · 13.1′
4G · 5A · 44SOG · 30HIT · 36BLK
C
Radek Faksa
14 pts · 13.1′
4G · 10A · 47SOG · 87HIT · 45BLK
RW
Joel Kiviranta
7 pts · 11.7′
4G · 3A · 58SOG · 80HIT · 23BLK

Defence pairs

D1
LD
Thomas Harley
46 pts · 21.9′
10G · 36A · 143SOG · 44HIT · 146BLK
RD
Miro Heiskanen
60 pts · 23.9′
10G · 51A · 146SOG · 26HIT · 122BLK
D2
LD
Esa Lindell
28 pts · 19.2′
6G · 22A · 85SOG · 40HIT · 170BLK
RD
Nils Lundkvist
7 pts · 17.8′
2G · 6A · 64SOG · 35HIT · 59BLK
D3
LD
Lian Bichsel
6 pts · 15.8′
2G · 4A · 48SOG · 186HIT · 56BLK
RD
Tyler Myers
11 pts · 16.5′
3G · 8A · 79SOG · 83HIT · 117BLK

Special teams

Scratches & depth

Roster movement & minutes

who changed, and the minutes freed‹ 6 / 12 ›
In Myers, Kiviranta, Burroughs, Tiefensee, Poirier, Ertel, Fitzgerald, Fuder, Hryckowian, MacDonell, Martino, Seminoff
Callup Hughes
Out Bourque, Bunting, Petrovic, Lyubushkin→NSH, Erne, Bastian, Bertucci, Fuder
Faksa11.7→12.7 +1
Benn13.3→14.2 +0.9
Hryckowian13.3→14.2 +0.9
Heiskanen25.5→24.9 -0.6
Lindell23.2→22.3 -0.9
Lundkvist16.5→15.1 -1.4
Myers19.5→17.4 -2.1
Kiviranta10.4→7.4 -3
Biggest projected minute changes either way — a club's ice time is a fixed budget, so the departures above are what free it up. Full board →

Camp battles

contested roles, priced in points‹ 7 / 12 ›
Second power-play unit — quarterback6.9 pts at stake
holds it
Thomas Harley
46 proj pts · 22.9′ · 1.9′ PP
vs
pushing
Esa Lindell
28 proj pts · 22.3′ · 1′ PP
Thomas Harleymodel favours the incumbentEsa Lindell
1.75 more min/game on PP2 (measured PP1 vs PP2 minutes), at the challenger's own scoring rate over a full season. Power-play gaps come from measured PP minutes last season; even-strength gaps from the role model that drives every projection on this page.
Top power-play unit — quarterback6.3 pts at stake
holds it
Miro Heiskanen
60 proj pts · 24.9′ · 3.5′ PP
vs
pushing
Thomas Harley
46 proj pts · 22.9′ · 1.9′ PP
Miro Heiskanenmodel favours the incumbentThomas Harley

Power play

28.6% last season · who it runs through, and what is left of it‹ 8 / 12 ›
Conversion
28.6%
on the man advantage
PP goals
74
525 shots
Expected goals
64.9
+9.1 vs actual
Shooting
14.1%
of PP shots go in
What left the power play
Bunting carried 5% of the power-play points on 1% of its minutes — a focal score of 4.09. He is not on this roster.
Who it runs through · last season
PlayerPP/gmSharePPGPPAPPP/60ixGIPPFocal
Johnston3.51′70%2715428.7417.177%1.36
Rantanen3.92′78%628348.127.278%1.27
Robertson3.87′77%1526417.7511.873%1.21
Hintz3.05′61%613197.047.871%1.09
Heiskanen3.47′69%226286.282.164%0.98
Duchene2.45′49%59146.015.359%0.94
Hryckowian0.75′15%2354.961.8—0.79
Steel0.57′11%1234.340.2—0.7
Seguin2.25′45%1343.951.9—0.6
Benn1.63′33%2463.691.753%0.56
What IPP, focal and ixG mean
IPP is the share of the power-play goals he was on the ice for that he got a point on. It is the direct form of “the play runs through him”: two men can take the same unit minutes while one touches the puck on every goal and the other watches from the far circle. League average on the power play is 59%. It is computed from the on-ice record of every goal, corrected for the ~18% of goals with no on-ice row and shrunk toward the positional mean for thin samples, so it cannot exceed 1.
Focal is the older, cruder version — his share of the team's power-play points over his share of its minutes. It is team-relative, so it moves when a teammate is injured; IPP does not. ixG is the expected goals from his own shots on the man advantage. Minutes are measured, not modelled.
Projected PP1Robertson38 PPP (41 last yr)Johnston40 PPP (42 last yr)Heiskanen25 PPP (28 last yr)Rantanen39 PPP (34 last yr)Hintz24 PPP (19 last yr)
Projected PP2Harley10 PPP (7 last yr)Benn9 PPP (6 last yr)Seguin7 PPP (4 last yr)Hryckowian5 PPP (5 last yr)Steel2 PPP (3 last yr)

Hits, blocks and the rest

what a banger league is won with‹ 9 / 12 ›
Hits
148828th
projected, this roster · of 32
Blocks
123311th
projected, this roster · of 32
Shots
219029th
projected, this roster · of 32
Penalty minutes
68017th
projected, this roster · of 32
Faceoff wins
27757th
projected, this roster · of 32
H+B
272126th
projected, this roster · of 32
S+H+B
491130th
projected, this roster · of 32
Who supplies them
PlayerGPHits/60Blks/60PKPIMFOW+/-H+BS+H+B
Bichsel LD362186▲10.62563.211.147—+3242290
Burroughs60131—67——62—-7198233
Myers RD371833.581175.12.657—-11200279
Lindell LD28240▲0.951705.654.018—+26211296
Harley LD1·PP279441.451465.491.526—+9190333
Hryckowian L1·PP2811196.63432.451.341187+1161246
Heiskanen RD1·PP17426▲0.641224.033.228—+7147294
Rantanen L1·PP179552.23391.390.28898+594286
Benn L3·PP266865.94301.730.152155+6116205
Blackwell L366968.07312.672.130119-1127186
Faksa L463876.9453.892.222288+1132179
Johnston L1·PP183532.045120.729408-1104331
Steel L3·PP277744.03291.482.127159+1104187
Hintz L2·PP174673.93331.180.826507+17100262
Kiviranta L46180▲7.13231.71.1149+6103162
Robertson L2·PP183551.73371.230.3283+1691367
Lundkvist RD26335▲1.82593.360.323—+894158
Bäck L472301.95362.492.31346+467111
Capobianco4519▲1.8444.060.117—+06391
Hyry3452▲8.14141.532.09198+066108
Duchene71311.85271.470.112336+257172
Seguin L2·PP25134▲2.4130.80.49248+1648125
What actually moves these numbers
Penalty-kill time is the strongest driver of blocks we can measure. Across 1,504 consecutive season pairs, a skater who gains a minute of shorthanded time a game adds a median 9.5 blocks over 84 games — a defenceman 16 — and the effect runs monotonically the other way too: lose a minute and it is −15.6, or −25.9 for a defenceman. The PK column is here for that reason.
But it is mostly the minutes, not the man. Shorthanded time correlates +0.52 with blocks per 60 across players and only +0.14 within the same player year to year, which says coaches pick shot-blockers for the kill more than the kill turns anyone into one. A player promoted onto PK1 gains blocks because he is on the ice for more shots, not because he changed — so price the ice time, not a breakout.
Hits run opposite to ice time. Total minutes correlate −0.57 with hits per 60, and −0.60 among forwards: the fourth line hits, the first line does not. So a rate beats a total here more than in any other category, which is what the /60 columns are for — a checker on eleven minutes at 12 hits per 60 is worth more than a first-liner at 5 on nineteen, and their season totals can look identical.
Power-play time predicts the absence of all of it — −0.43 with hits per 60, −0.47 with blocks, −0.26 with penalty minutes. The men who run a power play are not the men who supply a banger roster, which is why the two sections of this page rarely name anybody twice.
Faceoff wins are a volume category. They track draws taken far more than win rate, so the man to want is the one taking the most — normally the first-line centre and whoever takes defensive-zone draws on the kill.
Measured on 2022-23 through 2025-26, skaters with 40+ games and 200+ minutes at both ends of each pair.

Contracts and the cap

what the roster costs, and who reaches the market‹ 10 / 12 ›
$106.4Mcommitted · 25 of 25 on file
12reach the market after this season

Pending free agents · this summer

Jason RobertsonLUFA$12.00M96 pts
Tyler SeguinCUFA$9.85M32 pts
Tyler MyersDUFA$3.00M11 pts
Sam SteelCUFA$2.10M31 pts
Casey DeSmithGUFA$1.02M
Joel KivirantaLUFA$1.00M7 pts
Lian BichselDRFA$0.92M6 pts
Jamie BennLUFA$0.85M38 pts
Kyle BurroughsDUFA$0.85M6 pts
Oskar BäckLUFA$0.82M9 pts
Colin BlackwellCUFA$0.81M10 pts
Cameron HughesCUFA$0.81M1 pts

Free the summer after

Radek FaksaC$2.00M14 pts
Nils LundkvistD$1.75M7 pts
Justin HryckowianC$0.95M29 pts
Kyle CapobiancoD$0.88M3 pts
Arttu HyryC$0.88M4 pts

Biggest cap hits

Mikko RantanenR$12.00M6y left · NMC
Jason RobertsonL$12.00Mfinal yr
Thomas HarleyD$10.59M7y left
Tyler SeguinC$9.85Mfinal yr · NMC
Roope HintzC$8.45M4y left · NMC
Miro HeiskanenD$8.45M2y left · NMC
Wyatt JohnstonC$8.40M3y left
Jake OettingerG$8.25M6y left · NMC

Cap hits from CapWages for the 25 men on file. A dash is a figure we do not have, usually a restricted free agent whose entry-level deal has lapsed, and those are left out of the committed total rather than counted as nothing.

The crease

GSAx last season, projected next‹ 11 / 12 ›
GSAx view
Oettinger
54 NHL starts last season
GSAx / start
0.072
lg -0.040557th pctile
Shot quality faced
0.1034
lg 0.10443rd hardest
0.60-1.514182
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-82 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
46 GS27 W (16–35)0.895 SV%2.84 GAA
2025-26 actual · NHL
54 GS35 W0.899 SV%2.59 GAA
DeSmith
28 NHL starts last season
GSAx / start
0.253
lg -0.040575th pctile
Shot quality faced
0.1028
lg 0.10434th hardest
0.60-1.514181
10-start rolling GSAx · appearance 1-81 · shared scale
2026-27 projection
36 GS18 W (11–24)0.897 SV%3.01 GAA
2025-26 actual · NHL
28 GS15 W0.907 SV%2.43 GAA
GSAx is goals saved above expected — what the shots he faced were worth, minus what he actually allowed. Shown per start, because a backup cannot out-accumulate a starter but can out-perform him on a per-night basis. Shot quality faced is expected goals per shot: higher means he was hung out to dry more often, and the percentile is where that workload ranks among goalies with 15+ starts. Rolling form is a 10-start moving average — is he playing well lately; running total is the season's accumulated damage. Per-game GSAx is too noisy to read either from directly.

Projections — Every Skater

the reference table · Overall is value as a z-score against the league, so +1.00 is a standard deviation above average‹ 12 / 12
Forwards · 15
PlayerRoleAgeOverallADPGPGAP / if fitPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Mikko RantanenL1·PP130+2.5936.379326798.7390191553988+59894286PP1
Jason RobertsonL2·PP127+2.471283405595.8380276553728+16391367ascendingPP1
Wyatt JohnstonL1·PP123+2.1829.583434688.6401226535129-1408104331ascendingPP1
Roope HintzL2·PP130+1.26144.574264066.3/73241162673326+17507100262PP1
Matt Duchene35+0.92179.671203958.1/66180115312712+233657172
Jamie BennL3·PP237+0.11290.966142538.4/479089863052+6155116205declining
Tyler SeguinL2·PP234-0.15267.251131932.1/51707734139+1624848125declining
Sam SteelL3·PP228-0.17292.877122031.42183742927+1159104187
Justin HryckowianL1·PP225-0.26292.481131629.350851194341+1187161246—
Radek FaksaL432-0.91292.46341013.50247874522+1288132179
Colin BlackwellL333-1.04292.5664710.40160963130-1119127186
Oskar BäckL426-1.09—72459.10144303613+44667111
Joel KivirantaL430-1.18292.661436.90058802314+69103162ice time ↓
Arttu Hyry25-1.30292.434224.1/10014352149019866108—
Cameron Hughes30-1.44—4000.6/9004622013812—

Shading is that man's percentile among all projected forwards in the league, not among these 15. top 10% top 20 top 30 bottom 20. H+B and S+H+B take the weaker leg, because good at both is a floor rather than an average. P, SHP, PIM, +/- and FOW are unshaded — the percentile block does not carry them.

Defence · 8
PlayerRoleAgeOverallADPGPGAP / if fitPPPSHPSOGHITBLKPIM+/-FOWH+BS+H+BTrajectorySignals
Miro HeiskanenRD1·PP127+1.0171.674105160.3/662511462612228+70147294ascendingPP1
Thomas HarleyLD1·PP225+0.42138.479103645.81001434414626+90190333
Esa LindellLD232-0.32216.28262227.811854017018+260211296sell-high
Tyler MyersRD336-1.02293.4713810.900798311757-110200279decliningbounce-backice time ↓
Nils LundkvistRD226-1.17292.363267.10064355923+8094158
Kyle Burroughs31-1.23—60145.600351316762-70198233
Lian BichselLD322-1.2429162245.500481865647+30242290
Kyle Capobianco29-1.35—45122.80027194417006391—

Shading is that man's percentile among all projected defencemen in the league, not among these 8. top 10% top 20 top 30 bottom 20. H+B and S+H+B take the weaker leg, because good at both is a floor rather than an average. P, SHP, PIM, +/- and FOW are unshaded — the percentile block does not carry them.

Goalies · 3
GoalieGSWLOTLSV%GAASVSAGASHOGSAxGSAx/GS
Jake Oettinger46271460.8952.84108812151282.9+3.90.072
Casey DeSmith36181440.8973.0192310291061.6+7.10.253
Rémi Poirier——————————0—

Projected record and projected ice time are model estimates; ranks, lines, projections and trend signals trace to real data.

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