Some Thoughts on How Injuries Might Affect the Dallas Stars' Playoff Matchups

That's a pretty good team, turns out

Radek Faksa practiced yesterday

I’m heading to the rink for morning skate, but I wanted to touch on a couple of things from yesterday quickly.

First, check out Episode 2 of Algorithmically Incorrect Hockey, if you haven’t yet. Sean and I had a couple of great chats with Jack Han and Rick Bowness yesterday, and I think it’s a great listen (or watch, so long as you block out the left half of the screen).

By the way, go buy Jack’s new book. You’ll be a smarter hockey fan as a result, I promise. It’s really easy to grasp, but it also has a lot of sound principles for coaching as well. I’ve enjoyed the past couple editions, and it’s one I never miss when it comes out each year.

Hockey Tactics 2026 available now!

Okay, back to the Stars.

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Glen Gulutzan told the brutal truth yesterday. When it comes to Roope Hintz and Sam Steel, it’s not a certainty that they’ll be ready for Game 1 of the playoffs.

You should watch his whole presser from Wednesday, but there’s one clip in particular that I think is worth paying special attention to in order to get the full context:

While none of the currently injured players are set to come in tonight against Minnesota, Radek Faksa and Michael Bunting are scheduled to play in one of the next two games after that, if all goes to plan. The hope—a word we’ve heard quite a bit lately—is that Bunting will play Saturday against the Rangers, and Faksa will come into Game 81 in Toronto.

As for Roope Hintz and Sam Steel, however, Gulutzan said two important things: that the final two games of the year against Toronto and Buffalo are the soonest that either would get into a game, and that it’s still not a certainty that either will be ready for Game 1 of the playoffs.

When asked at the end of the above clip about whether he thinks Hintz and Steel will be ready for the beginning of the playoffs in a little over a week, Gulutzan was candid.

“We’re hoping, yeah. We’re hoping,” Gulutzan said. “No setbacks and everything, we’re hoping. But it’s not 100 percent.”

With Nathan Bastian sidelined for another 3-4 weeks as well, the Stars’ forward depth will continue to benefit from every single player who can get healthy. But with just a week left in their regular season, Dallas is facing the very real possibility of beginning a tough playoff series against Minnesota without some key players.

On the reporting side of all this, I’ll add some key information here: we haven’t seen Hintz or Steel skating with the team at practices yet, though we know Hintz has been skating by himself for about a week now, and that Hintz was making some good progress as recently as last weekend.

And as for Steel, Gulutzan did say that the hip flexor/groin injury he suffered on Long Island on March 26 wasn’t as bad as they had initially thought. On March 31, Gulutzan said that ten days was an optimistic recovery timeline for him. And on April 4, Gulutzan said that, aside from Bastian, there was a real chance Steel, Hintz, Bunting, and Faksa could all be back by Game 82.

This is the nature of injury reporting in the NHL, where recovery is not always linear—take Faksa’s accelerated recovery, for example—and where the appetite for news is nearly always far greater than the supply NHL teams want to create. After all, how does it benefit teams to be fully transparent about these things?

With that said, I’ve been thinking about the Stars’ playoff chances a lot over the past couple of weeks, and I think it’s worth discussing how they relate (directly or indirectly) to all the injuries they’ve suffered, and whose recovery is really most critical when it comes to advancing.