from Sean McCullen of NHL.com,

Here are four reasons for the Stars to be optimistic:

Goaltending depth (and competition): With the addition of Niemi, the Stars won't have to ride incumbent No. 1 goalie Kari Lehtonen, who played in 65 games each of the past two seasons and looked worse for the wear in 2014-15, when he had the second-worst save percentage (.903) of his NHL career.

Niemi was 31-23-7 with a 2.59 goals-against average, a .914 save percentage and five shutouts in 61 games with the San Jose Sharks last season.

"They're both very competitive guys, so they're going to push each other, which I think is the best thing," Nill said.

More commitment to defense: The Stars were not good defensively last season, finishing tied for 26th in the League in goals allowed (3.13 per game). They were particularly bad in October and November, when they allowed an average of 3.46 goals over 24 games.

"We didn't early on buy in to you've got to play the game both ways," Nill said. "And a little bit of that is inexperience with a young group of guys. We learned our lesson. By about December we figured that out; the trouble was we had already dug a hole for ourselves."

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