The Dallas Stars are still waiting for Tyler Seguin, Cody Eakin and Ales Hemsky to return to practice, and now they’ll have to wait until at least April to have Mattias Janmark in the lineup.

With a number of high-priced offensive players, the Dallas Stars forward group relies on young, talented and, most importantly, cheap players to fill out the bottom-six. One player who fits that bill to a tee is Mattias Janmark, but the Stars will be without his services for almost the entire season due to knee surgery.

Concern about Janmark arose Wednesday when he was mysteriously absent from the Stars’ roster for a pre-season game against the Colorado Avalanche, and the suspicion that Janmark had suffered an injury grew when he didn’t suit up for practice Thursday. Following the practice, Stars coach Lindy Ruff said that Janmark was indeed missing time due to injury and that an update would follow. However, few would have expected that update to be so dire.

Per DallasStars.com’s Mark Stepneski, Stars GM Jim Nill announced Friday that Janmark will be out at least five months following knee surgery, which is slated for Friday afternoon. It’s not a knock or a tear that Janmark is dealing with, but a joint disorder called osteochondritis dissecans.

While it’s not necessarily a season-ending injury for Janmark, it’s fairly close. A five-month timeline for return means Janmark would be healthy, if you can call it that, by February and possibly in line for a return by March. However, Stepneski reported that Nill isn’t expecting Janmark to make a return to the lineup until April at the earliest, which means he could only be healthy enough to skate in the final five games of the Stars’ season or make his real return come the post-season.

Janmark scored 15 goals and 29 points in his rookie campaign while logging 14:10 of ice time per game, but there was a very good chance Janmark was going to move into a full-time middle-six role this coming season. His ice time likely would have gone up, and the hope was his production would follow.

Losing Janmark is awful news for the Stars, but it’s even worse considering the list of injuries the club is already dealing with. Tyler Seguin, Ales Hemsky, Cody Eakin and Devin Shore are all on the shelf right now, and Jamie Benn, while healthy, is taking pre-season games off in order to rest up following core muscle surgery in the off-season. Ruff says things are moving in the right direction.

"Everybody is better, I can tell you that," Ruff said of the injuries Thursday, per Stepneski. "It's a process...Every day they are getting closer. I can see light at the end of the tunnel.”

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Canada wasn't the dominant team for a change but managed to pull out a late third-period comeback and clinch the World Cup on a shorthanded goal by Marchand.

TORONTO – The greatest hockey nation on Earth won 15 straight games of best-on-best hockey by playing almost flawlessly. For win No. 16, though, Canada finally did things differently. It won ugly.

Canada was the inferior team for about 57 minutes against the plucky Europeans in Game 2 of the World Cup final but found a way to create magic when it really mattered. It survived with a 1-0 deficit thanks to an urgent, meaningful performance from Carey Price and stopped hearts at the Air Canada Centre with a third-period blitz that included a power play goal and, with less than a minute to go, a shorthanded goal from Brad Marchand which stood up as the game winner. The Euros didn’t know what hit them. They had Canada on the ropes, but when 60 minutes ran off the clock, they’d lost 2-1. Canada repeated as World Cup champion.

Game 2 started much like Game 1 did – with the Euros the aggressor. Only this time, Canada didn’t calmly flick a switch and quell the uprising. Instead of rallying after what they admitted was their weakest effort of the tournament, they came out even emptier Thursday night. It took them six minutes to record their first shot on goal. At 6:26 of the first, European blueliner Zdeno Chara streaked in at the top of the left faceoff circle and rifled a perfect wrister into the far top corner past Price’s glove. The puck bounced out, looking like it hit the crossbar, but it was a legitimate goal.

Typically, Canada had been almost godlike during this tournament in its ability to answer after any hint of adversity was tossed at its feet. The Canadians trailed against the U.S. for 1:29 in the round-robin and against Russia for 1:12 in the semifinal. But the answer just wasn’t there for two periods in Game 2 against Europe.

Part of it was Canada’s fault. It played an uncharacteristically sloppy game. We saw some of the sport’s most fundamentally sound players – Alex Pietrangelo, Ryan Getzlaf, even Sidney Crosby – attempt lazy home run passes and cause turnover after turnover, granting the Euros multiple odd-man rushes. Aside from a glorious chance for John Tavares early in the second, in which he hit the post from point-blank range with a wide-open cage, Canada struggled to generate 10-bell scoring chances.

And as much as Canada might’ve want to shoulder the blame on itself, Ralph Krueger’s Team Europe earned the lead after two periods. Nothing about Thursday’s performance was fluky. The forwards, led by two-way maven Anze Kopitar, were dogged all night long, harassing the Canadian puck-carriers, forcing them into rash decisions.

"They've got a good team," said Canada coach Mike Babcock. "You put a whole bunch of countries together, Kopitar is a good player and Roman Josi is a good player…the perception is that we're miles better than everyone else. I think our country is deeper, but you only get to play five guys at a time. I thought they did a real nice job. I thought they made it tight. They worked hard. They believed in what they were doing. To me that's what hockey is about.

It’s been 15 games since we could say it, but the Canadians were outplayed. They weren’t the better team. And Price actually had to be The Man for them, something Canada hasn’t needed him to do often in best-on-best competition. The Euros tested him with 33 shots, and he remained his usual icy-cool self, particularly sharp making pad saves on low shots.

And that effort gave Canada the base it needed for a proper late push. In the second half of the third period, the ice finally tilted. Jaroslav Halak robbed Crosby in alone after Marchand sprung him with a feed into the slot. But Kopitar of all people took a holding penalty with just 3:35 remaining. Canada had the opening it needed. Brent Burns one-timed a Crosby feed and Patrice Bergeron deftly tipped it past Halak, tying the game 1-1 and eliciting the type of roar we hadn’t felt from the fans at the World Cup throughout Canada’s games. The stakes had finally been raised, and this goal finally felt like it meant something.

Drew Doughty took a potentially deadly high-sticking penalty with 1:50 to go, and the Euros got the golden opportunity with Marian Hossa all alone five feet from Price, but he denied Hossa.

"When he made that save, that kind of brought it to another level," Marchand said. "And we feed off of that energy, there's no question about that. You could tell the boys were confident, and you definitely want to help him out when he makes a save like that. You've got to play your part, too, and fortunately we were able to return the favor."

They sure were. On a 2-on-2 rush shorthanded, Jonathan Toews threaded a feed to Marchand…and Marchand couldn’t have placed the shot better. It was a laser to the top corner, Halak's blocker side, over the diving Josi, the perfect shot at the most opportune moment.

"So you're thinking, 'All right, let's just get this to overtime, see what we can do,' and 'Marchy' comes in with a big goal, an unexpected one but much needed," Crosby said. "A real change of emotions there pretty quickly, but it made it exciting and definitely special."

Marchand's dagger ended a Cinderella run for Europe, a team that drastically defied prognosticators' expectations. Even though the series ended in a 2-0 sweep, it was highly competitive, and Krueger was pleased.

"When you see the minutes on some of the guys, and you see the effort of players that reached for their potential all the way through the game, it's extremely painful to see the final result," Krueger said. "But I feel nothing but pride in the way this group performed today, the challenge they put up against Canada. This group just continued to surprise and beat the odds and beat the thoughts of everybody that was watching."

Canada was its old, clutch, unstoppable self for just a five-minute window, and that was enough. Price was the MVP of Game 2, but Crosby, who led the tournament with 10 points in six games, earned overall MVP honors. He became the third player ever with a Hart Trophy, a Conn Smythe Trophy and a Canada Cup/World Cup MVP. The other two: Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky. Sounds about right.

Matt Larkin is a writer and editor at The Hockey News and a regular contributor to the thn.com Post-To-Post blog. For more great profiles, news and views from the world of hockey, subscribe to The Hockey News magazine. Follow Matt Larkin on Twitter at @THNMattLarkin

Expect the Red Wings playoff streak to end this season, especially if they don't start giving more ice time to their best players.

THN is rolling out its 2016-17 Team Previews daily, in reverse order of 2015-16 overall finish, until the start of the season.

THN's Prediction: 5th in Atlantic

Stanley Cup odds: 32-1

Key additions: Frans Nielsen, C; Thomas Vanek, LW; Steve Ott, C

Key departures: Pavel Datsyuk, C; Brad Richards, C; Kyle Quincey, D; Joakim Andersson, C

THREE QUESTIONS:

-Does the playoff streak end this year? Yes, 25 years will be the capper. The Red Wings have simply lost too much top-end talent the past few years, and Pavel Datsyuk’s Russian retirement surely seals their fate. Without Datsyuk, Detroit returns just one player who tallied more than 45 points last year: captain Henrik Zetterberg (a team-leading 50 points). Thomas Vanek sure isn’t going to move mountains, and Frans Nielsen’s impact will be more in the two-way department. Plus, Tomas Jurco may start the season on the shelf while recovering from a back injury – and he was a guy they needed to make a leap this year.

-Who will be the most effective defenseman? With Niklas Kronwall’s career on the wrong side of a tipping point, it might be Danny DeKeyser. The Red Wings had incredibly stratified usage when it came to their blueline last year, and DeKeyser played the toughest minutes of all. Second place went to Kyle Quincey, but he’s gone. At least one more salvageable season from Kronwall would go a very long way, but he already has a knee problem that kept him from the World Cup.

-What can we expect from Dylan Larkin? Continued ascent, for sure. Larkin labored in the second half of his rookie campaign, and coming off one year in college (where the game schedule is light) may have been a factor. But now the splendid young center knows what to expect, and the speed he used as jet fuel during all-star weekend festivities will be used even more effectively thanks to a full summer of training. Once Larkin really takes hold, he’s the offensive heir apparent to the outgoing Zetterberg/Datsyuk alliance.

Player projections are based off a three-year version of Game Score (which you can read about here) weighted by recency and repeatability and then translated to its approximate win value (Game Score Value Added or GSVA). Team strength was derived from the combined value of every player’s GSVA on a team. The season was then simulated 10,000 times factoring in team strength, opponent strength and rest.

BY DOMINIK LUSZCZYSZYN

This team was once the model franchise, but they’ve been in a serious tailspin over the past few seasons, and with the departure of Pavel Datsyuk, continuing their playoff streak will be a tall order.

The biggest issue in Detroit is minute distribution. Too much ice-time is given to guys who don’t really help the team and not enough is given to their best players.

Last season, Luke Glendening averaged 14:34 minutes per game while Tomas Tatar averaged 14:21. Some might argue that Tatar wasn’t producing enough to earn more minutes (what’s Glendening’s excuse?), but his 5-on-5 points per 60 stayed constant from the 2014-15 to 2015-16 season and his primary points per 60 actually increased. He’s also one of the team’s best play drivers. Glendening doesn’t produce or drive play, but somehow earned more ice-time. That simply shouldn’t be happening. 

That’s not all. Gustav Nyquist, one of the team’s best offensive threats, was getting middle-six ice-time while Justin Abdelkader, a third-liner on any other team, got first line minutes. On defense, Brendan Smith was the team’s 6th or 7th D-man on most nights, despite being the team’s best play-driving D-man. That possession ability translated into the team’s highest 5-on-5 goals percentage, but who cares about goals, right?

Here’s a simple experiment showcasing just how inefficient Detroit’s lineup structuring is. Let’s pretend every team gave their best players (according to this model) the most ice-time and their worst the least. Their best player would get an average No. 1 forward ice-time, their second best an average No. 2 and so on. This would create an “optimal” lineup according to Game Score, with the difference between their actual lineup showing how efficient it is.

Here are the results of that (which don’t factor if a 13th forward or 7th D-man are better than someone else in the lineup). Detroit is last. By a lot.

 

This model is by no means perfect, but if you’ve been tracking each of these previews you’d see it generally does a decent job of valuing the best players on each team. That’s not to say this is how every lineup should be constructed, there’s other things to consider like chemistry, fatigue and effort level. But when a team is as inefficient as the Red Wings, it’s definitely a problem worth looking into.

Detroit likely doesn’t make the playoffs this year, and if their ice-time deployment is anything like last year’s they’ll only have themselves to blame.

Up next: Nashville Predators

Previously: Toronto Maple Leafs | Edmonton Oilers | Vancouver Canucks | Columbus Blue Jackets | Calgary Flames | Winnipeg Jets | Arizona Coyotes | Buffalo Sabres | Montreal Canadiens | Colorado Avalanche | New Jersey Devils | Ottawa Senators | Carolina Hurricanes | Boston Bruins

Sidney Crosby and winning in a Canadian uniform go together like macaroni and cheese. And as good as mac and cheese is, Crosby is better.

“Who owns this game?” It started out as a (terrible) marketing pitch for the World Cash Grab of Hockey™. But after the final of the World Cup of Hockey, that question has been answered emphatically. And with an exclamation point.

Sidney Crosby. Sidney Crosby owns hockey. The most valuable player of the 2016 playoffs and the most valuable player of the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, the best player on the planet today, owns hockey. It’s all his and it sure looks as though nobody is going to take it away from him anytime soon. Sidney Crosby also owns two Stanley Cups, two Olympic gold medals, one World Championship, two NHL scoring championships, two NHL MVP awards and a Rocket Richard Trophy. Hell, let’s even throw in the Mark Messier Leadership Award. And the way he played in the playoffs last spring, don’t dismiss the possibility he might even win a Selke Trophy one day.

Lady Byng? All right, that’s a stretch. A big one.

Canada, by virtue of its nail-biting 2-1 win over Team Europe in Game 2 of the tournament final, does have some minority ownership here. After all, the players with the maple leaf on their chests have won five of the past six best-on-best tournaments and are the reigning World Champion.  But Crosby now has a mind-boggling 25-game winning streak in a Canadian uniform – including 16-0-0 in best-on-best competition, a golden goal in 2010, an insurance goal in the gold medal game in 2014 and, now, the scoring title and MVP award at the World Cup.

Captain Canada indeed. There are only three players in the history of the game who have been named most valuable player in at least one NHL season, one Stanley Cup playoff tournament and a World/Canada Cup. One is Wayne Gretzky. Another is Bobby Orr. And the third is Sidney Crosby, a player who will be joining the previous two in the Hockey Hall of Fame someday. That’s because not only is Crosby the best player in the world, he’s the best player in the world at the most crucial times.

“I just think about serial winners and that’s what he is,” Team Canada coach Mike Babcock said of Crosby. “When you look at guys like him and (Patrice Bergeron) and obviously  (Jonathan Toews) and guys like that, in the biggest moments they’re better. They can’t help themselves. They’re addicted to winning and they just make it happen.”

That has certainly been the case for Crosby in Canadian togs. The World Cup marked the eighth time in Crosby’s career that he has played for Canada. In those events, he now has five gold medals and a silver and has 32 goals and 67 points in 54 games. Of the 51 players who have averaged better than a point-per-game in their careers, Crosby is on a list of only 10 other players who have better than a point-per-game regular season, in the NHL playoffs and in international competition – Gretzky, Orr, Mario Lemieux, Peter Forsberg, Mike Bossy, Eric Lindros, Gilbert Perreault, Pavel Bure, Bobby Hull and Evgeni Malkin are the only others in that group. And, not surprisingly, they either all do or will in the future have plaques in the Hall of Fame.

“It’s special,” Crosby acknowledged after the game. “I think I don’t have to look too far to think about how tough it was a year ago starting the season. I think I appreciate this a lot. It’s not easy. To be a hockey player playing for Team Canada and be with this group of guys has been a lot of fun. To be able to win it is special for a lot of reasons, but yeah, it’s been a great month.”

There are some wonderfully talented players in the NHL right now. Patrick Kane is the league’s reigning MVP and Connor McDavid, entering just his second year in the league, is right on everyone’s heels. It would not be a stretch to think he might even win it this season, depending upon whether or not he can get the Edmonton Oilers in the playoffs. But right here, right now, at this moment in time, there is no one better than Sidney Crosby.

“Sid is unbelievable,” Babcock gushed. “He’s great to be around. I’ve been real lucky I’ve been three times and we win every time. He does it right. He works hard. He doesn’t complain. If he gets 15 minutes, he doesn’t say a word. If he gets 20 minutes, doesn’t say a word. If he misses three shifts in a row, he doesn’t say a word.”

Actually, when it comes to speaking of himself, Crosby doesn’t say a whole lot of anything. His play, though, has spoken volumes. In a tournament where there was too little intrigue, save the play of Team North America and the final three minutes of Game 2 of the final, Crosby went to the top of a mountain and screamed at the top of his lungs.

“I own this game!” he said with his play. Again.