Dallas Stars' Commitment to Antti Niemi Seems an Unnecessary Risk

The logic is sound. The motivation is obvious. Heck, the contract isn't even a bad one.

The Dallas Stars will spend $13.5 million over the next three seasons for the services of Antti Niemi, a Stanley Cup-winning goaltender with above-average numbers during his career. One season ago, Kari Lehtonen posted a disappointing .903 save percentage in 65 games, some of which he played while injured out of necessity, as the team lacked a capable backup.

Stars general manager Jim Nill addressed the issue Monday by signing Niemi, yet it comes at a steep cost to the overall team.

The Stars have allocated $10.4 million of their salary cap to goaltenders over each of the next three years, the biggest number in the league.

Nill's thinking is this: He has bargain contracts throughout his lineup, which affords him the cap room to patch a hole he tried to patch in the past with unproven (Anders Lindback) or older (Tim Thomas) goaltenders who failed to do the job.

Niemi is 31 years old, and his save percentages have ranged between .912 and .924 over his past six seasons.

Lehtonen is also 31 years old. Before last season, he lived between .911 and .922 over the eight previous seasons.

Nill could have banked on Lehtonen returning to that form in 2015-16; instead, he essentially bought an expensive insurance policy that is very likely to be unnecessary, no matter how the season plays out.

"We explored every angle of it," Nill said on a conference call Monday. "We had our meetings back in May and went through the free-agent list, the different options for our goaltending. We knew we had to make some changes. There's two ways we could've gone; one way was the free-agent route, the other was to make a trade using our draft picks, prospects or players off our team.

"Antti was the No. 1 UFA we had targeted."

Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

Nill has thought this out and it makes sense. The Stars might have it worse than any team in the league when it comes to travel and existing in the Central, a division that sent five teams to the playoffs last year. Having Niemi start the second game of back-to-backs instead of a lesser goaltender could be the difference between a playoff berth and a postseason miss.

But here's where the practicality of throwing that kind of money at the goaltending position instead of the players around the goaltender is almost guaranteed to backfire.

If both Niemi and Lehtonen play well, then money is wasted, because it turns out Niemi wasn't needed. If both Niemi and Lehtonen play poorly, then of course the money wasn't well spent. If only one plays well, then that's either $4.5 million or $5.9 million being spent on a roster spot that becomes a black hole of wasted money.

There's also no telling how Niemi and Lehtonen, two goaltenders accustomed to starting 60 or more games per season, will react to playing 30-40 games apiece. Not even Nill or new goaltending coach Jeff Reese can say for sure how two career No. 1 goaltenders will react to a drastic cut in playing time. 

There's a chance Lehtonen or Niemi come away with the lion's share of the starts, leaving the other as an expensive and unnecessary luxury.

If that's the case, Nill says that's not an issue.

"I hope that happens," Nill said. "It'd be a nice problem to have. The other thing is, financially, we kind of set ourselves up. We had a game plan three years ago when I first came here. We knew that this season we were going to have $15-20 million available in cap room. So really, the cap room and the money have nothing to do with this. We wanted to be able to put money in where we needed to put the money."

Nill also said that he doesn't expect to use the remaining cap space to address signing a defenseman. He said he's comfortable with his mostly young group but he would consider adding someone to the back end via a trade if the right one becomes available.

Having Niemi and Lehtonen signed for three years also presents a roadblock for 23-year-old goaltending prospect Jack Campbell, the 11th pick in the 2010 draft. Should he take a leap forward in his development at the AHL level next season, the Stars don't exactly have a contract that will be easy to move to create space.

In a way, though, Nill was stuck here. If the free-agent market isn't to his liking, either because of a lack of depth or the need to overpay on a long-term deal, then three years of Niemi are understandable. It's not as if buying out Lehtonen was an option. Nill feels Niemi could close that seven-point gap on a wild-card berth to get the Stars to the playoffs.

But Dallas would have been better off using that $4.5 million in other areas and betting that last season was an aberration from Lehtonen. If it turns out it's the team in front of the goaltenders that's the real problem, the Stars are going to be stuck with more than $10 million per year in goaltending contracts through 2017-18.

All statistics via NHL.com.

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @DaveLozo.