Mike Heika, Stars beat writer for SportsDayDFW.com and The Dallas Morning News, answered your questions about the team in a live chat recently. Here are some highlights:

How do you think NHL expansion is going to affect the trade deadline? Is it possible for a team to trade for someone only to have them shipped to Vegas? That would suck...

Heika: Yes, that is a concern. A team could acquire someone and then have to expose them in the expansion draft, and that is a risk. That's why pending UFAs such as Patrick Sharp and Patrick Eaves are desirable, because Vegas is probably not taking a player who can turn around and leave in free agency.

That said, teams also need to have the proper players to expose in the expansion draft (there are rules on amount of games that have been played this season, so that Vegas has a good selection). You could actually see teams acquire players with the intent of losing them.

Now, all of this can be done at the end of the season before the June 20 expansion draft, so the trade deadline might not affect much. My guess is that's when a lot of the goaltender shuffling might happen. Teams that have a good young goalie who might be in jeopardy of being taken probably want to keep them through the playoffs.

Trying to be a glass half full guy here: Does a down year now maybe help the Stars when it comes to expansion? Maybe Vegas won't want our people since we had a bad year.

Heika: No, Vegas takes one player from every team, so the Stars are going to lose someone good. But they lost Alex Goligoski, Jason Demers, Vernon Fiddler and Colton Sceviour last summer, so the expansion draft isn't that big of a deal. Good teams lose good players every summer.

The positive of this year is it gives an unvarnished look at the franchise. You have a clear assessment of all of your weaknesses and all of the areas where you need help. So maybe getting a new coaching staff is very needed, and you wouldn't have seen that with a kind of OK year that ended with a playoff loss. Maybe the goalie share program really is a disaster and you might have talked yourself into another year if you were sitting 15th in GAA and save percentage. Maybe the young defensemen and the 8-man defense has exposed itself as a really bad idea, and now you have to make hard decisions instead of waiting on Oleksiak, Nemeth and Johns.

The glass half full approach is maybe this year will force management to make significant changes and potentially improve the franchise for years to come. That's the hope anyway.

What do you think the Stars could get for Sharp/Oduya in a trade? Which ex-Blackhawk do you think has the highest chance of getting shipped off?

Heika: Oduya is not even playing, so I'm not even sure he is in the conversation for a trade until he tests his ankle injury in a game.

My prediction is that Dallas and Chicago find a way to make a trade for Sharp. He is exactly what Chicago needs, and Dallas could eat half his remaining salary or take an existing contract back if Chicago offers something good in the form of a prospect or draft pick.

They can make this work, and dealing Sharp back makes sense for everyone.

Which Stars player do you think has been underperforming the most this year?

Heika: I said Jason Spezza last time, and then saw he was the Normandy Homes Three Stars of the Game winner, so I'll change it up.

Antti Niemi wins this week. He has pretty much fallen off a cliff in the past two months and lost any confidence the coaching staff once had in him. He also might have lost any confidence he had in himself.

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