A Dallas Stars Midseason Checkup

What do you say when people ask how they're doing?

Screencap from Victory+

Many of you have probably had some variation on the following experience over the last day or two: You open a gift, and it’s a sweater/hat/ornament/memorabilia from your favorite hockey team. You react appropriately, expressing gratitude to the giver. Then an onlooker, who is usually a less hockey-focused relative, interjects with something like this: “Oh, is that from the Dallas Stars? Are they doing well this year?”

You have a lot of ways to respond to that question. The easiest answer is to do the polite version of the scoreboard taunt, referring to the Stars’ second-best record among the 32 teams in the league, thereby allowing the interlocutor to deduce how well the season is going.

But if they’re sharp—and relatives always tend to pick up on these things—they’ll notice that you didn’t quite answer unequivocally. They picked up on some reticence in your tone, some microscopic hesitation before you spoke. They could tell that deep down, you didn’t quite have the unfettered enthusiasm that one would expect to go along with the best start to a season since 2015-16.

Then again, maybe you have exactly the same amount of enthusiasm about this year as you did back then. Because as much as you might remember 2015-16 as a year the Stars coasted to the top of the conference on the back of thoroughly average goaltending before St. Louis crushed hearts and dreams in the second round, that regular season wasn’t exactly a cakewalk, either.

Take this victory over the Carolina Hurricanes in December, for example:

Sure, they went up 4-0 in the first period to chase Cam Ward from a game where Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin both had four points. But they also ended up in a 5-5 game in the final minute of regulation, before a power play goal from Patrick Sharp rescued things.

It was a good microcosm of that regular season, as it turned out. The 2015-16 St. Louis Blues were breathing down the Stars’ necks down the stretch, and Dallas only finished with the top seed by going 8-2-0 in their final ten games to match the Blues’ same performance, eventually finishing just two points ahead of St. Louis. That would give Dallas home-ice advantage when the two best teams in the West met in the second round—yes, it’s been a problem with this format for over a decade now—but that advantage would culminate in a forgettable Game 7 performance that cast a pall over everything else Kari Lehtonen had done and would do outside of that night.

So, how do you feel about this year’s Stars team, in 2025-26? Well, on the one hand, this year’s team is far less of a possession monster than Ruff’s 2015-16 Stars were, or even Pete DeBoer’s team two years ago who also finished atop the West.

Gulutzan has rebuilt this team’s approach from the defensive zone on out, whereas Lindy Ruff had his fellas getting out of the defensive zone before the puck ever did, leading to scoring chances and shot-generation at a league-best rate all year, which more than compensated for their having the fourth-worst save percentage in the league at 5-on-5 over 82 games.

But just like the Stars team a decade ago, Gulutzan’s squad is somehow right near the top of the league in goal-scoring. And this time, they’re also elite at preventing goals, sporting the fifth-best goals-against number in the NHL. Their goalies’ save percentages are strong-to-very-strong, and the underlying defensive metrics show them to be a team that has successfully repaired a lot of defensive issues from last season through 38 games.

Elite goal-scoring, robust goaltending, strong defending, and a top-five spot in both sides of special teams? That sounds less like a flawed contender, and more like an absolute juggernaut. What team in the league is hoping to face the Stars in the playoffs, right now?

There is a curse that comes from following a team for a long time, though. You are always going to view success through the skeptical lens of past failures, preparing yourself for the disappointment that always seems to land at the most painful possible time by trying to anticipate it.

Starting in 2016, that shot to the solar plexus always came from the hands of the Blues, whether in the first period of a Game 7 or in double overtime; two radically different approaches to Stars hockey, but the same inevitable result.

In the last three years, it’s been a mid-series spinout in the third round, a point where it became clear that Vegas or Edmonton simply weren’t going to break the way so many other Stars opponents did before. Those defeats have brought lots of unpleasant self-examination in Dallas, and some of that unpleasantness boiled over when the former coach didn’t feel like defending his goalie from criticism anymore, which is to say he levvied it himself.

So, how are the Stars doing this year? They’re doing fantastically, in all the ways that matter most except, you know, possessing the puck. But when you have strong defense and goaltending coupled with elite high-end skill, it makes sense that you can outrun those issues for a while as you continue to work on juicing the offensive generation a bit more.

And again, they’re defending really well, which avoids the decade-ago frustration of blown leads and unprotected goaltenders. They’re chock-full of elite players who will be playing for their respective countries in two months, and they have a coaching staff both new and old, a Glen Gulutzan who strikes you as simultaneously avant-garde and classically trained surrounded by assistants who have earned all the praise they’ve gotten.

They’re also just 38 games into the season, which means that Stars fans are all expecting some kind of shoe to drop, eventually.

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I think it’s important for sports to be fun. That means that, as much as you can as a fan, it’s important to enjoy goals, wins, and nice plays in the moment, rather than viewing everything as only a precursor to ultimate success or failure in the playoffs.

And man, that 2015-16 season was fun—and fun in a way unlike even the Stars’ next Western Conference title (Regular Season Version) in 2023-24.

It was an absolute joy to watch prime Jamie Benn (fresh off his Art Ross Trophy), John Klingberg, and Tyler Seguin tearing through the league en route to what looked like an almost-certain Stanley Cup matchup with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang in Pittsburgh. Hockey was looking more fun than it had in decades, and there was every hope that the new wide-open offense of some of the best teams in the league was a precursor to a league-wide revolution that would wipe the dead puck era from our collective memory.

Ken Hitchcock and the Blues had other plans, that time. But I just cannot force myself to view that ‘15-16 team with anything other than fondness. Some cities never get a team that watchable—or a successful one even of the boring sort—but Dallas has given its fans many different iterations of an elite hockey team over the last 26 years. Just because 15 of the 16 playoff teams don’t win each year doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the ride that leads up to.

There were some pretty cool goals that happened a decade ago.

This year’s team has already brought more than its share of Kodak moments, too. To list just a few of the things that these first 38 games have brought that deserve some appreciation, how about the following:

• Good luck picking the best Mikko Rantanen tally of the season thus far (it’s probably this one). He’s become a hated villain by other teams and shown heroics in equal measure for his own, which is worth the price of admission (which happens to be free, if you’re watching locally).

• How cathartic was it for the Stars to pile up eight goals in Edmonton?

• And how delicious was it to see the Stars begin the season with Jake Oettinger and Mikko Rantanen once again crushing Colorado beneath their heels in an early shootout win?

• Both Oettinger and DeSmith have recorded shutouts, by the way, whether it was in a classic 1-0 fashion against Washington or a nonchalant 7-0 victory lap in Montreal.

• Miro Heiskanen is playing like a Norris Trophy candidate again.

• Jason Robertson appears to have taken a whole lot of things personally, and he’s channeling it into what could be his best season yet.

• Wyatt Johnston has figured out how to exploit opposing penalty kills like NHL ‘94 players did with wraparound goals. He still has more power play goals than the Toronto Maple Leafs.

• Radek Faksa’s return has not only bolstered the penalty kill and given Sam Steel more lineup flexibility, but he’s also brought a shockingly effective amount of offensive production in the first half of the season. He’s been an even-strength beast, which is as delightful as it is unexpected.

• Jamie Benn is likewise returning to an earlier form, as he has not only recovered form a collapsed lung to resume playing hockey in the best league in the world, but he has done so to the tune of being tied for 5th on the team in goals despite missing half the team’s games so far this year.

• And before fate landed its latest cruel blow, Tyler Seguin even managed to score against the Ducks for the first time in his career (during the regular season), and it was a beauty on a breakaway.

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The Stars face Chicago tomorrow, then Buffalo on New Year’s Eve, before a brutal January schedule will make you realize just how important all these early wins were.

Hockey-Reference.com

How you feel about this team now will not be how you feel about them after that, when they will be on the cusp of playing their 50th game of the season. Some players will be slumping, some will be red-hot. And they will not all be the same ones doing so now. The best and worst part of sports is never really knowing what’s going to happen next.

The Stars have found a way to be, through 38 games, one of the best teams in hockey. The next 44 will give us even more insight than we’ve already had about just how resilient this team can be in the heat of the playoffs. But what the next 44 games won’t bring is the moments you’ve already had watching this team, and there have been a whole lot of them this year. And with two more games to go before the calendar turns over, I’d guess they probably aren’t done bringing them just yet. Try to enjoy them, if you can.