Opening Night and Closing Ranks

Four months after the Stars’ season petered out in Edmonton, we’re about to do this all again. We’ll spend 82 games talking about how they don’t really start mattering until game 83, even as we argue about which player deserves what award for the 82 games we all agree matter less than every single thing that happens afterwards.

I hate this, to be honest. Sure, we can all agree that Jason Robertson still has something to prove in the playoffs—just look at his regular season numbers vs. his playoff numbers last year, for instance—but that doesn’t mean you can’t cackle with delight every time he creates a core memory during the regular season.

One of my favorite screenshots of any Stars game since the pandemic is this moment in March 2022 after the overtime goal, when Robertson somehow dug deep and found one last burst of speed after a long 3v3 overtime shift and scored the game-winner. John Klingberg caught up to the gassed Robertson afterwards, just in time to play Simba to Robertson’s post-wildebeest Mufasa.

You had to be there, genuinely. Sure, this was the end of the 2021-2022 season, which ended with a thud against Calgary a year after the team cratered and missed the playoffs entirely. And sure, this season would be the death knell of Rick Bowness’s time in Dallas, which began with his sudden appointment in the wake of Jim Montgomery’s off-ice decisions and reached its pinnacle in the bubble, when the Stars reached the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since 2000. In the grand scheme of things, one win against Winnipeg shortly before bowing out of the playoffs doesn’t matter all that much.

But I can’t fathom how you could enjoy watching all 82 games of Stars hockey if you’re hell-bent on reserving all real celebrations for the spring. I’ve met people with this mindset, but I really can’t understand it. They’ll talk about how “well, they beat the Blue Jackets despite the power play still looking awful, whoop-de-do.” Or they’ll spend all year talking about how Jake Oettinger isn’t a “big-time playoff goalie.” These are the same people who were whining about Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin’s contracts three years ago, as though they were personally sending the two guys a wire transfer every 14 days from their kid’s college fund.

You just can’t live like that. And the data all seem to reinforce this fact. Our bodies are designed for cycles of activity and rest, feasting and fasting, rejoicing and weeping. Of course you’re allowed to angrily mash the remote control and change to a great cooking show when the Stars let you down in early January. That’s your right as a fan, and in the past we’d have said that you paid for that right. But this year the Stars are footing the bill with Victory Plus, and like 90% of the games are going to be free to watch. So actually, I’m going to revoke that right. You may gently mute the volume after a 6-1 drubbing against Pittsburgh (for some reason), but you need to send a handwritten apology to Brad Alberts if you start yelling at your television at any point before the playoffs. I don’t make the rules, sorry.

There is so much worth watching in the regular season. Not least of which is the ability to detach from a result more quickly than a playoff game, for we all know how quickly the anxiety ratchets up the minute the playoffs start, and how much harder it is to really enjoy anything when we’re wound that tightly. Or, as some idiot once wrote:

Relish it. Delight in it. Laugh at how stressful this all is, and be thankful that we get to experience it. This journey is never a given, and the result is even less certain than the opportunity. Cheer, scream, and wail, but do so with gratitude. Sports get really stupid when you feel entitled to something, but they can be something special when you remember that every single moment we get to enjoy them is a gift.

The regular season is more blessed that the playoffs in a few ways, not least of which is the freedom to let go of each game (until it’s coming down the wire in a tight race for a final playoff spot, which isn’t that likely for this team, thank goodness). If it’s a truly rotten one, you can simply analyze and dismiss it when it’s over. Or before it’s over if you turn it off in disgust, but again, make sure you mail your apology note.

Sports aren’t the most important part of real life, but they’re populated by real human beings playing, coaching, officiating, and watching them. It is no coincidence that people make lifelong friends as a result of shared fandom. They are the accidental cause of marriages, family memories, and friendships, but even an accidental cause deserves its due.

I’ve read countless essays in the vein of, “I used to watch _____ games with my dad, and now that he’s gone, I still kind of feel like he’s with me when I watch.” Every one of them hits home, and I’m sure I’ll write something similar someday about Monday Night Football in high school, and my dad and I sharing Dreyer’s Butterfinger Ice Cream, each of us always in our respective seats like we had to buy tickets for our living room. It’s not about the game, of course, but the game is the occasion for what it’s really about, which is each other.

So don’t look past the cool moments this year. Don’t pretend like these games don’t matter, because every moment matters. Revel in the freedom to celebrate an unlikely goal by Ilya Lyubushkin alongside the inevitability of Wyatt Johnston. Don’t fear the (always likely) disappointment of end of the road while you’re in the thick of the party, and for goodness’ sake, enjoy the people you’re partying with! I don’t think you could ask for a better group of folks than the ones I’ve met because of this team, and I don’t think my experience is unique in this regard. Jim Nill has built something pretty special here. So as you prepare to once again close ranks and look askance at fans of the other 31 teams, just remember to look with love on the team you’re supposed to be rooting for. Criticism is fine and even healthy to exercise, but when you’re talking about actual human beings, even ones playing a game, that criticism needs to be balanced out with love. You start to walk in circles if you only use one leg.

***

The picture atop this post is a (probably knock-off) Neal Broten North Stars jersey that an old men’s league teammate got me like 12 years ago. I wore it during pickup skates and playoff games in games at rinks that are the Ducks equivalent of StarsCenters here in Texas, right up until I got a concussion and decided it was time to switch to five-a-side soccer and live long enough to actually receive money from my 401(k).

But that was a choice I had to make, to take something as pristine as a brand-new hockey sweater and get it all sweaty, dirty, ripped, and frayed. I haven’t bought a hockey sweater in a few years, but if I had kids and could afford to buy them sweaters, I would absolutely encourage them to wear the heck out of those things until they fell apart, got covered in spaghetti sauce stains, or whatever.

I think it was Jack Falla in Home Ice who talked about him or his kids playing with a stick some legendary NHLer (maybe Bobby Orr, perhaps Wayne Gretzky) gave them. The kids didn’t think to revere the stick or put it in a glass case; they just used it on their backyard rink until it finally broke, then they moved on to the next stick. I suppose it’s the same idea in The Sandlot, too. Kids have to be taught not to play with bats and balls and sticks, because they intuitively know the truth: there is no better reason for wearing a famous person’s hockey sweater or using a baseball of any kind than to be a kid, pretending you are that famous player. Sports are one of the best ways to remind ourselves that imagination is a gift, too.

***

I wish the Stars would hang a banner for the regular season Western Conference Championships again. I get that hanging a separate banner for every single Division and Conference championship could dilute the more prestigious banners for the concave trophies, but I want to know that the harrowing journey of 2015-16 lives in the hearts and minds of the other 19,000 people in the AAC the same way it does in mine. I want everyone to see that the Stars earned home ice throughout the playoffs last year, even if they ended up squandering it.

Jussi Jokinen scored four goals in the regular season long before Joe Pavelski and Denis Gurianov were hopping on that bandwagon during the playoffs. And it was cool, man. It was so cool. Look at that Sergei Zubov seam pass to hit Jokinen at the blue line on the first goal here seventeen years ago, wait that can’t be right, can it?

That pass was the brilliance of Zubov, in one of his final seasons, working with a newcomer to exploit the abolition of the two-line pass rule. It worked at even-strength, and it worked on the power play. This four-goal game was part of a season that ended with its own glorious series of playoff moments, even if the Stars didn’t bring home a single banner to show for it. But don’t be fooled: that season was still fantastic, with the last Dallas games by Junior Lessard, the unforgettable NHL debut of Tobias Stephan, and the bold Brad Richards trade that sent Jokinen and Mike Smith to Tampa Bay.

But that season was also the last time we got to really see Zubov, Mike Modano, Jere Lehtinen, and Marty Turco all play a majority of a season together. At the time, we thought the old core had another year or two left in them, but in fact, this was the last really good Stars team we would see for another eight years, and not a single one of these players would be around to see the next iteration. If they had brought anywhere near a healthy group of players to face Detroit in the Western Conference Final, I really believe it could’ve been a Last Dance sort of run, but even that is probably dreaming, given the juggernaut those Wings were.

I’m not going to apologize for dreaming, though. And you shouldn’t need to apologize for enjoying every regular season game on its own merits, because they all have them. The tapestry of Stars fandom is woven with threads from October and June alike. Who are we to says the final strands from a given year are any more important than the initial ones from another, let alone the connective tissue in the dead of winter?

Hockey is back, and I’m going to savor every game. I promise you, there will be moments before the playoffs that stick with you for the rest of your life. Maybe it’ll be Mason Marchment getting another goal called back, or maybe it’ll be a four-goal night by Logan Stankoven. There’s no way to know what will happen, but I’m going to go into this season with an open heart, ready to be wooed or hurt as time decides. (But I’m also going to buy a few blank notes and a pack of stamps, just in case.)