Neither the Dallas Stars nor the Arizona Coyotes are playing for a playoff position this season. Nor does the outcome of their game have any true impact on anyone else’s playoff chances.
It’s like a Sad Bowl.
However, both fan bases have something they can look forward to: the youth. For Dallas, it’s seeing what guys like Jason Dickinson, Gemel Smith, and Julius Honka can do — and then doodling their names into your fantasy lineup all season long as trades are made and free agents signed. For Arizona fans, it’s seeing another year of development of young guys like Max Domi, Anthony Duclair, and Lawson Crouse, both on and off the ice.
We also get the pleasure of watching some of our favorite players on the ice for one of the last times this season. And while many of us cannot wait until the offseason begins for the Stars, I’d like to remind each of us how fun this game really can be.
The speed, the athleticism, the talent viewed on the ice is magical and combines in one beautiful dance that provides us with moments of pure, unadulterated joy. It’s a feeling quite often forgotten in the midst of working and paying the bills and relationship drama and loneliness and the any number of other things that come with this thing they call “adulting”.
How truly wondrous that we get to see it a few more times in the ol’ American Airlines Center barn before the long summer days of Texas heat consumes us.
So sit back, Stars fans, and enjoy the boys of winter tonight. Throw out the season: the frustrations, the irritation at line choices or lack of development from certain players, and the constant wondering of what the front office sees that we, the fans, do not in playing Cody Eakin as a number one center.
Leave it all behind, and enjoy the wondrous moments — and watch the future play today in front of the home crowd.
Puck drop is at 7:30 PM CST and you can catch it on TV at FSSW+, as well as the usual radio home of the Stars, The Ticket.