Dallas Stars: 5 burning questions for 2018-19 season
By C.L. Kohuss
4. Will Jason Spezza rebound or plunge further into the great abyss?
Yep, we can hear the guttural scream. Jason Spezza has not been traded, bought out or left in the woods somewhere to this point in the offseason, so the shock value will be very high if any of those things happen before October.
It appears General Manager Jim Nill is sticking with him for the final year of his contract, and boy do we want to know what’s set to transpire.
It’s been well documented that Spezza did not have a good year under previous coach Ken Hitchcock. He played in 78 games and scored 26 points. Those numbers would have been fine if not for that $7.5 million price tag. That’s the same price tag he’ll be carrying into this new campaign. Yikes.
But while we can sit here all day and harp on how awful of a season it was for him, and how damaging the tail end of that contract may be, there’s really not much more we can do than to let this run its course. He’s on the roster, he’s going to play second-line minutes and we have to accept it.
The hope is that he can return to some sort of form where he popped 50 points in 2016-17. That would make this in the least a pill we can swallow. The best outcome would be him returning to 2016 when he put up 33 goals, but let’s not hold our breath.
Who knows, Jim Montgomery could in fact be the key in getting him back on track. Wouldn’t that be something? Imagine Spezza going beast-mode and winning the Hart Trophy. Okay let’s not lose our collective minds here.
Really, all we want to know is whether or not he’s going to show up. That sounds simple in and of itself, but the question is scorching hot at this juncture. Dallas is banking on his production and it could be a total sink-or-swim move to keep him around in the hopes that he returns to life.