If the Dallas Stars were a Canadian-based team, or team based in America's northeast, we might be hearing a lot more about their recent slide. Going back to January 9^th, a span of 20 games for Dallas, they have the fewest regulation/overtime wins in the league. In that span, Anaheim has eight, Philadelphia has seven, and San Jose has six. That stretch of games has also seen Dallas score less often per minute than teams like Montreal and Columbus. A pile of overtime/shootout losses have helped keep them firmly in the playoff race, but it's been an awful quarter of the season for them, and perhaps that's why they went out and traded for Chicago's Max Domi:

Anton Khudobin had been stuffed in the AHL in favour of Scott Wedgewood (now injured) so we'll see if the Blackhawks leave him in the AHL or bring him up. Maybe he gets a few starts the rest of the way. The Dobber Prospect profile of Dylan Wells is found here.

Let's break down what the Stars are getting with the help of our Frozen Tools and Natural Stat Trick.

What Dallas gets

At this point of his career, Domi is something of a known quantity. The defence is what sticks out first – there's not much of it – so he has to make up for the lack of defensive play with good offensive play. Despite his constant moving around, he is a good offensive player.

Corey Sznajder has been manually tracking games in a variety of stats for years now, which gives us lots of data to look through with Domi. In each of the last three seasons, Domi has had a scoring chance assist rate at 5-on-5 (passes leading to a teammate's scoring chance) come in above the league average. This is one reason why he's tied with Leon Draisaitl in primary assists/60 minutes at 5-on-5 over the last three years. From 2016-2019, he was literally eighth in the league by this measure (min. of 2000 minutes), out-pacing names like Sidney Crosby, Nikita Kucherov, and Patrick Kane. Quite simply, at least at even strength, he has been a tremendous playmaker pretty much since he stepped foot on an NHL ice surface. That is a strength of his and that is something Dallas needs at the moment with their goal scoring where it is. Perhaps Domi can help Mason Marchment snap out of his months-long slump.

For Domi to stay in the lineup, in a prominent role, however, he needs to do more than be a playmaker. Goals of his own or improved defence is the only way to assure a good spot. He was over 18 minutes a night with locked top PP time in Chicago. Tie's kid is going to have a tough time cracking the top Dallas power play unit, which has been locked in place for half the season. His value will have to come through a lot of good even-strength play, and if he's played often away from the top stars (pun kind of intended), it may be a struggle for consistent fantasy value when combined with the loss of PPTOI. This could be a situation where he comes in and actually helps the team by giving players like Mason Marchment or Tyler Seguin a scoring uptick, but declines in fantasy value because of the middle-6 role and sparse special teams play. The coaching staff will also have to determine how much to use him if he can't be better on the defensive side of the puck.

It does put the top-9 roles of players like Marchment and Ty Dellandrea into question. The top line is staying, the Jamie Benn line is staying, so someone from the third line is going down one notch, and pushing a fourth-liner not named Radek Faksa to the press box. It also means Marchment or Wyatt Johnston off the power play. Depending what Dallas does here, Marchment could see his role diminished considerably moving forward, though Johnston may suffer from rookie-itis and see it be his turn.

This isn't great news for the remainder of the Chicago roster. Patrick Kane is gone, Domi is gone, Sam Lafferty is gone, Jonathan Toews is injured, and a pair of defencemen were dealt. When healthy, guys like Tyler Johnson, Philipp Kurashev, and Andreas Athanasiou will get lots of top offensive minutes, it's just a matter of what those minutes are worth, and it's unlikely to be much.

Who this hurts

Ty Dellandrea

Max Domi

Fredrik Karlstrom

Tyler Johnson

Who this helps

Mason Marchment (as long as he keeps his current usage)

Tyler Seguin

Wyatt Johnston