NHL Central Division Predictions for the 2024-25 Season
1. Dallas Stars
The Stars won the Central last year with 113 points.
The Stars were fairly busy this summer. They added Ilya Lyubushkin, Matt Dumba, Brendan Smith, Casey DeSmith and Colin Blackwell. They lost Joe Pavelski, Ryan Suter, Chris Tanev, Craig Smith, Scott Wedgewood, Radek Faksa and Jani Hakanpaa.
I'm not a fan of the offseason work for Dallas. Most of their moves were filling holes on the blue line adding Lyubushkin, Dumba and Smith. I wasn't a fan of both the Lyubushkin and Dumba deal and thought they were overpaid.
The blue line looks worse than it did last season with the loss of Tanev. The first pair is currently projected as Heiskanen and Thomas Harley who just got a two-year extension. Heiskanen is great so even though I'm not the biggest fan of the blue line, having one of the best defensemen in the league is huge. They also just locked up their second-pair left-shot defenseman Esa Lindell to a five-year deal with an AAV of 5.25 million.
This team is almost built in the opposite way of Colorado. I'm a huge fan of the forward core. Hintz and Robertson are both great players and they also have great veterans in Duchene, Seguin and Benn. I'm excited to see the steps in Wyatt Johnston and Logan Stankoven's game after they had their coming-out party in the playoffs. This forward core is so deep with a mix of great vets and exciting younger players.
I'm also a big fan of Oettinger in net for Dallas. He had a bit of a down year for his standards last season during the regular season, only posting a .905 save percentage, 0.49 goals saved above average, and 1.46 goals saved above expected. He had a bounce back in the playoffs where he was great and I expect him to have a better regular season this year.
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Dallas will win the Central and be a Cup contender again this season.