Free agency is around the corner. The St. Louis Blues hoisted the Stanley Cup, reminding us all of the cruel puck luck that struck Jamie Benn in overtime of game seven a mere month ago. With any luck at all on the open net wrap around he missed, St. Louis doesn't hoist the Cup. We all know it. He knows it. Potential acquisitions know it. They know how close the Stars were to being in the Western Conference Final.

So, the Stars should be a prime free agency destination, right? I'm not sure.

If you're a free agent looking for the best chance to win you probably want a team with a good younger core ready to compete at the highest level. That isn't the Stars.

Tyler Seguin is the youngest member of the core forwards and he'll turn 28 in January. Jamie Benn is 30 in July, and has been entering his decline phase for a couple of seasons. Alexander Radulov is 33 in three weeks. Ben Bishop is 33 in November. A soon to be free agent has to be very confident this group is going to compete for a championship in the next two, maybe three, years.

That isn't to say that the Stars have no young talent. John Klingberg is a year younger than Seguin. Both guys combined with Miro Heiskanen give you a very high level trio under 30 years old. If you, as a free agent, are signing up for five or more years, do you feel confident that a team currently dedicating so much of it's present to Benn, Radulov, and Bishop will be at a championship level several years down the line?

Money talks though. It always does. If the Stars money-whip just about any free agent they'll be a Dallas Star on opening night. Questions about the long term viability of the roster will inevitably come up alongside questions about how they will like Dallas, and how they can expect to be treated as a member of the Stars.

We hear players talk about how much they love living in Dallas and love the virtual anonymity of playing hockey in Dallas. Last December we also heard Jim Lites lament that this reality exists during his scorched earth tirade against Benn and Seguin, among others including the media for, I suppose, not also ripping good players to shreds. If you're looking for a potential employer in a marketplace where multiple suitors will pay you the same exorbitant salary how much are you willing to open yourself up to this type of attack?

"What nobody says is what is completely obvious to me: We are getting terrible play from our top two players.

"We pay these players to be the best players on our team," Lites said, "and they are consistently out-efforted and outperformed by everybody else's best players.

"It's pissed me off," Lites said. "What nobody says is what is completely obvious to me: We are getting terrible play from our top two players."

Ignoring the flimsy, at best, merits of his comments, potential free agents surely remember them. The NHLPA even released a statement condemning them.

The comments Jim Lites made regarding Tyler and Jamie are both reckless and insulting. If players directed such comments towards management, how would those be regarded? To say that Jim Lites' conduct is unprofessional would be a gross understatement. In professional sports, all individual players and teams go through highs and lows, but this is not how professionals handle adversity.

That isn't exactly a friendly-worded statement, and as the body elected to represent the players we can safely assume this is how just about any of them would feel about being on the end of this targeted attack. No one on earth would openly want to deal with that in a vacuum that doesn't include a paycheck with six or more zeros tacked on the end.

While it may not be to the same extreme as Benn or Seguin, players certainly noticed what Jason Spezza has dealt with the past two seasons too as he has reached the end of his contract. The Stars have put a significant amount of unnecessary baggage into existence that has to, on some level, knock them down a peg or two in the eyes of potential free agents.

This is a franchise with significant needs and cap space. We're three weeks away from finding out their plans for addressing those needs. I, for one, am incredibly curious to see if and how the events of the last 12 months plays into the decision-making process of potential free agents the Stars target. If push comes to shove and the money is equal, why wouldn't a free agent sign elsewhere at this point?