Does a John Klingberg reunion make sense?

Probably not. So instead let's focus on what it could mean.

Yesterday Darren Dreger reported that five to seven teams are in on John Klingberg. Edmonton, Toronto, and Ottawa are presumably frontrunners. And his former team, Dallas, is one of them.

If you’ve been around the Stars for a long time, you remember what a relief Klingberg was for Dallas. Once Sergei Zubov was done in 2006, nobody was able to carry his torch. The Stars thought they had that player in Trevor Daley, but Daley was never that guy. In fact, looking back, it was hard to even call him an offensive defensemen. He was more like an extra attacker, never driving offense so much as appearing to drive offense. Then Klingberg came along after an outburst of a season in the SHL, and one scenery-chewing cameo in the AHL, the rest was limited history.

For eight seasons, Klingberg was everything Stars fans could have hoped for and then some. It’s worth remembering that Klingberg came around before the boom of the puck-carrying defenseman. There was no such thing as total hockey, or rovers, or positionless systems. I mean, there were, but back then you had designated hitters rather than a red phone every defender could call in the offensive zone like now.

Klingberg tallied 374 points for Dallas, second behind only Zubov if we’re only considering Dallas and not Minnesota. Per Evolving-Hockey, he was worth an extra four points in the standings, on average, in his first five seasons. For a time, he was everything Stars fans could have asked for, and then some. He was an icon. “The second of his kind,” as Robert Tiffin so eloquently put it.

But his time with the Stars had been trending down, and is likely what led to his “departure” as much as Klingberg’s agent fumbling the bag. Recall that the Stars took a radically different approach in hockey philosophy following Lindy Ruff’s high-flying offense. Once the musical chairs of Moar Defense coaches strolled in, Klingberg’s role diminished somewhat. He was still seen as the top defender, but the system demanded something he couldn’t give (still one of Jack Han’s better pieces), and his game suffered as a result.

So, would a reunion make sense? A reunion involving a player who hasn’t even played hockey in 14 months? We’ll talk about Klingberg, and the obvious answer, but I’m more interested in what the rumor represents.

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