Pondering Dallas Stars Playoff Matchups and Fatal Flaws

Does the Edmonton loss mean the Stars in for another impossibly brutal road to the Stanley Cup Final?

Before we dig in today, I’d be remiss (and nobody wants to be remiss) if I didn’t mention my piece in D Magazine yesterday on Mikko Rantanen. Now I’ve mentioned it. Check it out if you haven’t already, or if you have, check it out again and tell ‘em I sent you for a 100% discount on their usual price of “Free.”

---

The Edmonton game Saturday night was a bummer in multiple respects, even if the Stars nearly exploited Edmonton’s Achilles heel in the third period, i.e. “when Edmonton tries to play defense.”

Seeing the Stars get skated out of the rink for 40 minutes to the tune of a 5-1 deficit against the team that knocked Dallas out of the playoffs was a bitter pill to swallow. It was a special sort of letdown with the team ready to show off their brand new superstar acquisition, only for a nasty injury to Roope Hintz to wind up as the cherry on a fertilizer sundae (Rantanen’s beautiful one-timer notwithstanding).

As for Hintz’s health, we may not get an update until Wednesday’s practice. As for the Stars’ hopes of reversing their fortunes from last spring, Saturday’s game was a bucket of cold water thrown on a burgeoning bonfire of hope. Have the Stars really done enough to beat Edmonton in a seven-game series this year after losing in six last time?

In the 14 games since losing Miro Heiskanen, Dallas has:

• A 10-3-1 record,

• Outscored opponents 62-43 (+19)

• 15 power play goals on 39 chances (38%!)

• Killed 30 of 35 penalties (86%)

• An NHL-best 13.65 shooting percentage

Their record in Miro Heiskanen’s absence suggested the Stars were nearly unstoppable. The result of that game suggested they were still extremely vulnerable to targeted excellence from another top team in the West.

There was a special sort of grousing among the fanbase after that loss on Saturday, because it was a special sort of loss. It was not, however, an altogether unique one. In fact, that game felt a lot like some other eggs the Stars have laid against top teams in the league this year. How about a trip down Repressed Memory Lane?

Oh, and let’s give an honorable mention to the 4-1 loss against Nashville in December, a stinker so stinky that it might have killed a decades-old tradition, but that’s just a theory. Anyway, that was one game against a bad opponent, so I’m okay with tossing it into the same cardboard box as the two losses to Anaheim this year and shoving it in the garage. Let us never speak of it (or them) again. Deal schmeal?

Now, let’s talk about the Stars’ Stanley Cup aspirations, and what kind of hit they’ve taken from what I think are their three most disappointing measuring-stick games this season other than that Edmonton loss:

• The first Florida game in Finland was a major letdown. Defensively, the Stars gave up a power play goal, a shorthanded goal, and four even-strength goals to Florida in front of a global audience. Jake Oettinger looked a bit shaky, and the Panthers were in control the entire night as the Stars limped to a 6-2 deficit in the third period before scoring a couple of goals in garbage time to make it look closer than it really was.

  • Facing the reigning champions is always a bit of a yard stick game. In this case, it felt like the Stars were using imperial units of measurement while Florida was kilometers ahead of them.

• The 4-1 loss in Winnipeg a week later also stung, particularly for Mason Marchment after he got nailed with a puck and had to get stitched up before returning to the game. It’s not super great that we have to disambiguate which “Mason Marchment got hit in the face with a puck” game we are talking about, this year.

  • Winnipeg’s record-setting 15-1-0 start to the season seemed sure to be a paper tiger fueled by insane goaltending and power play numbers that were bound to cool off eventually. Paper or no, the Stars got mauled just the same. Connor Hellebuyck’s goaltending continued to look like he was doing a Georges Vézina impersonation every night (and still does), while the Jet’s power play dropped two goals on the Stars in a win that felt like a shot across the bow of the Central Division. Turns out, it kind of was.

• The 6-3 loss in Colorado back on January 18 is also known as “Casey DeSmith’s last loss.” That was also the only time DeSmith—for reasons unknown—started the first game of a back-to-back set this year, rather than the second. as he’s done otherwise this season.

  • Stop me if you’ve heard this one: the Stars scored an early power play goal, then promptly gave up five in a row. Yeah, that’s right, they did the exact same thing in that game that they did in Edmonton on Saturday, except for the grisly injury part. They did have a real bummer of a goal called back for being offside, which is traumatic in its own way.

After each of those games, Stars fans were forced to take a good, hard look at their team. Could they really be confident in its hope of finally climbing back to the Stanley Cup Final if the team was capable of a performance like that/those against a truly formidable opponent/opponents?

The Stars, of course, have gone 14-4-1 since that January loss in Colorado, so it’s not like they’ve been moping around like George Michael Bluth. They’ve also beaten Colorado and Edmonton in other games this year, you know. Good teams can make you look bad on any given night, and Florida also caught Dallas in a bit of an anomalous circumstance, playing halfway around the world. All hope need not be abandoned entirely.

Still, those losses stick in your craw when you try to convince yourself that This Is Finally The Year. Those three clubs above are all likely obstacles in the Stars’ path to glory starting next month, and in each case, those three teams have shown the ability to outplay Dallas in pretty unflattering fashion.

When the team you’re rooting for lets you down like that, a common reaction is to rationalize and blame, pointing to whoever or whatever caused the embarrasing loss as a way of coping with the loss and steeling yourself against future letdowns. “Once bitten, twice throw remote at television,” as the old song goes.

What I’ve been considering this year is this: when is a regular season game indicative of both team’s true talent level, and when is it just a case of one team being better on a given night? The playoffs are when everyone is giving 110% and all that, whereas the regular season (and this season in particular) is an 82-game marathon that requires something much different than a 200-meter sprint, or a duel with swords at sunrise.

Something really stuck with me in talking with Steve Spott a few weeks back¹ though. He said that the Stars’ win in Game 7 against Vegas last year was perhaps the most satisfying moment of his Stars tenure thus far, because of how Dallas had lost to them in the Conference Finals the year before. The win showed Dallas could beat the reigning champions, that they really did belong in that upper echelon of NHL teams. That old demons really could be exorcised.

Honestly, I’d put that Colorado series victory last year in that same category, too. The Avalanche are a storied rival of the Dallas franchise, and while the Stars got the better of them a couple of times in front of Eddie a couple decades ago, they also got humbled by Colorado in 2004 and 2006.

More recently, the 2020 win over Colorado felt like a barely averted catastrophe against a team with an injured Nathan MacKinnon and a third-string goaltender. Dallas barely avoided blowing a 3-1 series lead thanks to a Joel Kiviranta miracle.

And last year, Colorado lost Val Nichushkin after Game 3 because of his off-ice misbehavior, and Dallas won the series on the famous Matt Duchene heartbreaker goal in overtime (after a shocking washout on a sketchy goaltender interference call that was just the latest chapter in Mason Marchment Versus the Referees).

So while Dallas has knocked out Colorado twice in the last four postseasons, the Avalanche have also won a Cup in that time, and they look terrifying almost every night. Suffice it to say, you will have reason to feel more or less confident after Dallas flies to Colorado for the final matchup between the two teams this season before an increasingly likely first-round face-off. Mikko Rantanen will have no small amount of pressure on him, but then, superstars are so-called because they can bear the weight few others players can.

Stars coaches and players alike have said that Dallas effectively played three Western Conference Finals last spring. That’s not a journey you forget, even when you remember those ugly losses to Colorado, Winnipeg, and Florida this year.

For my part, I come back to this: Dallas looked overmatched against Vegas two years ago, only to get past them last spring after a Wyatt Johnston overtime goal in Game 3 gave them a boost they rode for another series. And despite Matt Duchene’s subpar second half last year, he showed up for a huge goal in the biggest of moments—and he’s still riding that momentum to a fantastic season this year.

The Stars will be in for another such gauntlet, only with Cody Ceci playing the role of Chris Tanev. That’s no small concern, but then, every team has their own concerns. If your bottom-three defenders are the missing scale in your underbelly, you’re probably doing all right, comparatively. There’s a reason Colorado and Edmonton are not 3rd in the NHL right now.

I’m convinced that playoff games are a grueling, draining experience you simply cannot understand without playing in them. Every game feels like the most important contest in the world, and it kind of has to be, if you want to match the other side’s intensity. Players live and die for seven games against an opponent trying to hit you into the tenth row every time the puck goes into a corner. I really believe that, as much as we experience that wave of fear and joy in our vicarious investment as observers, players learn things about themselves and each other that can never be put into words. It’s real “man in the arena” stuff, or the closest thing we have to it in professional team sports. You have to skate as fast as you can every shift without losing track of anyone or anything on the ice, all while executing your positioning, passing, shooting, and defending without any flaw the opponent can sieze upon. It’s a pressure so far beyond anything that most people experience that any comparison is pointless (though I guess writers are technically supposed to do that exact thing).

Everyone is playing hurt, or playing scared, or both. If you keep thinking about your team’s flaws, you’ll never be able to exploit your opponent's vulnerabilities. The Stars aren’t the stingiest defensive team this year, but they have shrugged off early struggles from their top scorers to boast a scorching power play even before they added an offensive superstar. They have every reason to inspire the same fear in other teams that Colorado or Florida have inspired in you, just watching them.

Colorado is a beautifully terrifying team to face, absolutely. But no matter how bad that loss in January was, those two teams won’t be the ones playing in April, because the players who skate out for Game 1 of whatever series Dallas gets will have been changed by 82 games’ worth of battles and preparation, disappointment and satisfaction. Those games will not be like the games in five weeks.

A team this offensively potent, with the best specials teams combo in the NHL since 2025 began doesn’t have to prove anything in the regular season that they haven’t already. They won the West last year, and they’re right up there again despite significant injuries. Heck, the Anaheim Ducks are 2-0-0 against Dallas this year, but I don’t see that being a fact anybody is going to remember a month from now, let alone a year. (Maybe Corey Perry, actually. Seems like something he’d care about.)

It’s completely understandable for that Edmonton loss to have soured you on Jake Oettinger or Ilya Lyubushkin for a day or two, because fans have no choice but to live and die a little bit with each game. That’s why you watch them! But much as that game might feel like it validates every fear you have about this team, I guarantee you that every player on the roster knows that you win games by thinking about how to wield your own strength, not to mitigate your weaknesses. And both of those players have shown far more strength this year than lack of it.

Sometimes, the other team lands the bigger blows, but Dallas hasn’t gotten to 3rd in the league by being fatally flawed. Their depth and resilience are what led them back from a 2-0 deficit on the road in Vegas to a Radek Faksa Game 7 goal that we’ll remember forever.

And that all happened without Mikko Rantanen being around to turn the tide like special players can do in the playoffs, too. That’s not exactly a supporting character Jim Nill has added to this group.

Those “bad" losses in the regular season hurt so much, I think, because we’re secretly looking for some assurance that everything will be okay when it matters most. All but the newest sports fans are a tramautized folk, and the way we deal with that trauma is by telling ourselves the story will have a different ending the next time. Every measuring-stick game feels like a sneak peek at destiny, a chance to gain a little extra confidence before the emotional torture of the playoffs. To see the Stars look the way they looked for 40 minutes against Edmonton was a presentiment of disaster at 9:30 on a Saturday night, and that’s a rotten way to spend a weekend.

Really, we all know the Stars’ strengths and weaknesses, and so do the other teams. When you’re watching them play, the Stars’ cardinal virtue or trademark vice seems like the team’s dominant trait, depending on the outcome. But I’ve really come to believe that their greatest strength isn’t in their skill or speed or tactics or camaraderie, but in their collective confidence in those things. This group has faced more than their fair share of adversity together in recent months and years, hardships both self-inflicted and dropped onto their heads (or into their knees and faces) for no rhyme or reason. They’ve weathered it all, and they’re now 18 games away from the playoffs with the third-best record in the NHL despite missing both Tyler Seguin and Miro Heiskanen.

If you want to get a little sappy, just imagine what it could mean to this team to see both of those players back on the ice together in a few weeks. What would it mean for them to have the best version of this team all suiting up together after months apart, in pursuit of a goal so many players on this roster have never achieved?

For now, regular season games are all we have, even if they’re almost a different sport compared to what happens in a seven-game playoff series, where the hatred intensifies to a white-hot ball of tension that only the final horn can release, for a little while. So keep living and dying with each game, because they do matter, as much as any game can matter right now. It is always better to win than to lose, and it is a little extra better to win against teams like Colorado, Edmonton, and Florida.

Don’t mistake even the ugliest losses for anything more than a vision of things to come, though. In the regular season, we know in part, and we try to prophesy in part about likely playoff opponents. But soon, we will come face to face with the games that make us forget all about what happened in November, or January, or March. That’s when it’s time to live and die for real. So to speak.

1. I went ahead and unlocked that Spott piece for everyone, by the way. Tell your friends, and enemies.