Well, at least the Dallas Stars didn’t go down without a fight.
Granted, it sure didn’t look like they would at first — that first period might have been some of the most depressing, uninspiring hockey I’ve seen since *checks notes* Tuesday. But in the second, we had a glimpse of hope as penalties started to get called, with Dallas once again shutting down the Minnesota Wild power play while converting on their own. After all, that’s the only way Dallas was going to win, right?
Well that’s when they really got us — Mavrik Bourque broke the Stars’ 250 year 5-on-5 scoring drought, able to punish Jesper Wallstedt in one of the few times he’s gotten out of position this series. Dallas had the lead, Jake Oettinger was holding down the fort on his end, and given how frequent penalties had been this series and referees’ tendencies to “keep things even,” you had to figure there was at least one more Stars power play in the future.
But as anyone who has seen Ted Lasso would tell you, it’s the hope that kills you. It wasn’t even a minute of game time later that Vladamir Tarasenko evened things back up, and you could feel the momentum just deflate. To loosely paraphrase Ralph Strangis, whenever the Stars scored, there was a feeling of relief — when the Wild scored, it was just another goal to get excited about.
The nail in the coffin didn’t come until the third, however, when Quinn Hughes scored his second of the night by banking it in off of Ilya Lybushkin’s skate. Usually, you would read that and think it was just an unlucky break and curse the hockey gods. But when you watch it again (viewer discretion advised), it becomes very clear that Hughes, probably the best defenseman in the world not named Cale Makar, was very intentionally trying to bank it in that way, assuming one of his teammates wasn’t able to free up their stick at the last minute to tip it instead. That won’t work every time, but as they say, it only has to work once.
Like I said though, the Stars at least went down swinging, including pulling Oettinger for the extra skater with several minutes still on the clock (which, given their 5-on-5 struggles, was not surprising in the least). But in a series where their only edge was being able to score with the man advantage, they weren’t able to pony up when it counted, which means their season is done before the third round for the first time in four years.
So… what went wrong? Really, it all starts and ends with the constantly referenced 5-on-5 woes. Dom Luszczyszyn pointed out that the Stars actually had the expected goals edge in the series heading into Game 6, they just couldn’t finish. But even if you do your best to ignore the actual goals scored, it’s hard thinking of many times where it actually felt like Dallas had the edge in any way, shape or form at even strength, and certainly not over the length of the series.
That lack of scoring would be concerning for any team for any given year. But this is not just any team, and its not just any year — the Stars have had scoring dry up on them in the playoffs for the last four playoff runs1, and lifeless showings in what turns out to their final home playoff game of the year (often even the penultimate as well) have become common place. It just turns out it came much, much earlier this year than in the past. That’s not indicative of a coaching issue2, but seemingly of the players and team as a whole.
Now, to be clear, I’m not about to get on some “culture” soapbox — culture is a very real thing when it comes to sports, and a losing one will sink you, but that’s not an area of concern for one of the NHL’s most successful franchises (non-Stanley Cup winning category) over the past eight years or so. Rather its more likely to do with the type of players and what they can and cannot do. For example, the Stars have only two defensemen that can consistently transition out of the defensive zone, and sometimes they end up paired together (like last night). Hell, one of them, Miro Heiskanen, was responsible for two turnovers when trying to pass out the puck in Game 63, one of which forced Jake Oettinger to bail his team out and the other of which gave Hughes the series-winner.
Or, we could talk about the acquisitions since last postseason. Sure, Radek Faksa was arguably the MVP of Game 3, but he wasn’t exactly the type of player you bring on board when your biggest issue seems to be a lack of scoring at the end of playoff runs. Meanwhile trade deadline acquisitions Michael Bunting and Tyler Myers weren’t exactly difference makers — Bunting was a (healthy?) scratch until Game 6, which was coincidentally the same game Myers was scratched even though the Stars were already down a defensemen.
Speaking of which, yes, I know, I know: the injuries. The Stars were missing Roope Hintz all series long, and Tyler Seguin for most of the season. Nils Lundkvist got a skate to face mid-series and didn’t return. Mikko Rantanen clearly never got back to 100% after being injured at the Olympics. The excuses write themselves. But that’s what they are: excuses. The Wild also had their fair share of injuries, as does pretty much every team come playoff time. Guess what? They powered through and overcame them.
And at the risk of sounding overtly callous, let’s be honest for a moment here: Lundkvist didn’t even play more than a game (if that) over the last three playoff runs, so regardless of his strides forward this season, it’s not as if he was some “can’t lose” player in the lineup. And as for Hintz and Seguin, it’s the unfortunate reality that you kind of have to expect they will be injured come playoff time, or at least not playing 100%, which is a damn shame given how talented of players they are and how their absence was sorely felt.
But even then, do we really feel like having one of Hintz or Seguin was the difference this series? That one of them, or perhaps a fully healthy Rantanen (who still managed to score more than a point-per-game, mind you), would have suddenly solved the Stars even-strength struggles and tipped things in the Stars’ favor? At best, I think you could argue that maybe they help get you that overtime goal in Game 4, which completely changes the series, and/or they help give you a bump at the right time in Game 6. Truth is, even if they managed to eek our a series win, this still would have looked like a team that was going to be outmatched by the Colorado Avalanche in round two.
Perhaps that’s where my only solace comes in this playoff run — at the end of the day, I never really thought “this was the year,” which I can honestly say I’ve felt in each of the previous three runs (especially 2024), long before they actually went on said runs. Heck, I was team “maybe don’t do anything at the deadline” because I wasn’t sure they would be able to move the needle at all given their available assets, and look at that, I (sadly) feel pretty vindicated in that opinion right now.
That’s not to say that it’s all doomerism or that the sky is falling. This is still a very talented hockey team, and they will continue to be a Stanley Cup Contender going forward. The key for Jim Nill and Glen Gulutzan, however, will be how to make them into a true Stanley Cup Favorite, a la the Colorado Avalanche. Because you can easily argue the Stars were that just a year or so ago. But this year? I don’t think so.
• Growing up as a Stars fan whose oldest childhood memories of any kind date back to 2000, I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs in Dallas. I remember the consistent playoff years under Dave Tippett that never went the distance. I remember the dark days of bankruptcy and a five-year playoff drought, which was a part of a seven year stretch in which Dallas was always right on the playoff bubble, always securing a double digit first round draft pick that they’d proceed to almost always whiff on. I remember the roller coaster under Lindy Ruff from year to year, and the aforementioned eight years of very successful hockey after the failed Hitchcock 2.0 experiment.
But if there was one constant throughout most of that time, it was that the Stars just didn’t have a goal scorer. I’m not talking about players who can put the puck in the net — I mean someone whose identity is seemingly revolved around that, the kind of guy you expect to see in the Rocket Richard race every year. Jamie Benn scored 41 goals in 2015-16, and Tyler Seguin 40 goals in 2017-18, but they never reached those numbers again. You know who the team’s last 40+ goal scorer before that was? Mike Modano when he scored 50 in 1993-94, the first season in Dallas Stars history.
Plenty of players would score more than 30, and more than a few times someone would manage 39, but almost never 40. And heck, even the Stars leading scorers didn’t seem to be too terribly consistent — over the years, we’ve seen team leaders like Michael Ryder(!), Jaromir Jagr despite being traded mid-season(!!), and Dennis Gurianov who (in an admittedly Covid-shortened season) led the team with just twenty goals(!!!). No matter the time, whether through trade, free agency, or the draft, the Stars could just never get a guy whose purpose in life was to put pucks in the net.
And then along came Jason Robertson.
Robertson, who scored a respectable 17 goals in his 51-game rookie season (27 goal pace) who then scored 41 in his sophomore season and 46 in his third. Robertson, who took a step back with just 29 goals in 2023-24 before increasing it to 35 the next and almost tying a career high with 45 this year. Robertson, who has as many 40+ goal seasons than the reset of the Dallas Stars franchise combined after that first season in Dallas (thanks, Wyatt Johnston).
In a series where the Stars struggled to score, Jason Robertson was Mr. Automatic, scoring in each of the first five games for a total of 8 points, only failing to get on the scoresheet last night in Game 6. He is the exact kind of goal scorer the Stars have never truly had in Dallas, and you know what the best part is? Despite the narrative, scoring isn’t all he does, as even his defensive game is severely underrated. Just look back to last night when he managed to race with and out-muscle Kirill Kaprizov when the Wild super star looked all but guaranteed to score the (first) empty netter and end the Stars’ season (a bit earlier than Matt Boldy did).
Robertson is everything the Stars could ask for and more… and yet here we are, more than a year into the “should Dallas trade Robertson” discourse. Needless to say, I’ve always been flabbergasted by that line of thinking, even if the reasoning is sound. This is not just some top line player — this is Robertson, the player who scores on a team that has always lacked for consistent goal scoring (more so than ever in recent years), in addition to bringing other things to the table and playing a position or relative weakness in the Stars’ lineup. He’s not just a player you trade and then think you’ll end up better off, extra cap space for other players be damned.
It’s not Robertson’s fault that the Stars have handed out NMCs to pretty much every other top dollar player sans Wyatt Johnston and Thomas Harley, and thus is the most moveable outside of Johnston (which would be equally laughable if not more so). You pay the man, figure it out, and move on. If this was going to be point of concern, then you don’t make the Mikko Ranatnen trade and extension, or you don’t re-sign Matt Duchene for four years with a NMC, or Esa Lindell for longer with a NTC. Not commenting on any of those extensions individually, mind you, more so that you made those moves knowing they might hurt later because you wanted to win now. And that’s the exact same logic in why there should be no question as to keeping Robertson long term.
• Now, the Stars could use cap space, and the aforementioned NMCs for any player making more than a buck-fifty makes that rather hard. This is more so a topic for the offseason, but I think there are some options. Tyler Seguin has just one year left on his contract, which doesn’t help you next season but will provide some big relief after that. Not to mention that we don’t really know the extent of Seguin’s injury or recovery — again, given his history, there might be a better than not chance he ends up on LTIR again next year at some point.
In the same injury-plagued vein, you could stop and take a look at Roope Hintz. It’s never going to happen, because Hintz is never going to waive his NMC (and I’m not sure Jim Nill would ever ask him to, given how loyal he is to a fault), but on paper… if you had to choose one of your top end players with a big cap hit to offload, that player would be Hintz, not Robertson. This is not to say I don’t love Hintz (or Seguin), or that I feel like they aren’t/can’t be true difference makers when healthy… but that’s a big emphasis on “when healthy.”
Finally, and forgive me for beating a dead horse here, the Stars could help their salary cap crunch concerns by simply finding better players to round out the bottom of the lineup players. Like I said, great Game 3 from Radek Faksa, but as a whole, I’m not sure he’s brought anything to the table that Dallas didn’t already have internal solutions for. In contrast, you have players like Justin Hryckowian who made a big impact when given a chance, and I liked what we saw from Arttu Hyry in his limited games as well. Heck, the Stars’ biggest weakness, the defense (still), at least has some solid players for cheap, including the aforementioned Lundkvist who may very well turn out to be a solid second paring guy yet.
• On the subject of changes to the roster, this doesn’t exactly help with the salary cap, but I do wonder if we’ve seen Jamie Benn’s last game as a Dallas Star. He wasn’t just a non-factor this series — he was an active detriment to the team. Zero points, -7, and four very, very stupid penalties (not to mention other stuff that probably should have gotten called, but didn’t). Honestly, if he wasn’t the captain/a respected “veteran presence,” he probably would have been healthy scratched multiple times. And it’s not like this is a new problem — he was just as detrimental last postseason (3 points, -11, 26(!) PIM across 18 games), and his regular season was his worst scoring-wise since 2019-20.
And, of course, there’s the giant ‘C’ shaped elephant in the room. I will always defend Benn when it comes to his captaincy given how much players love him in that role, which is all that matters. But if you’ve had four straight postseasons where your team seems to run out of gas/go through the motions/falter at home at the very end, you’ve already made the coaching change, and you’re tight pressed for roster solutions outside of a (probably ill-advised) massive trade of a top player… having a new voice leading the locker room might be a card worth playing. And if you’re doing that, there’s no way you’re keeping Benn around, partially because of the potential awkwardness but also the aforementioned lack of production/active harm to the team when it matters most.
I know Jim Nill has said before that Benn will be around as long as he wants, and as I mentioned, Nill is loyal to a fault. But he’s also a businessman, and so is his boss/franchise owner. I could see (and even argued for) the case for bringing Benn back for this season on a cheap one-year deal. I just can’t justify it again.
• Finally, Jake Oettinger was not the better goalie this series — Jesper Wallstedt takes that honors. But Wallstedt, in addition to just being lights out fantastic, also had much stronger support from his team (especially at even strength), and as a whole wasn’t challenged as much as Oettinger I feel like. That’s not to say Oettinger is blameless, and there are certainly goals he would like back (even outside of Game 1)… but after a very, very rough regular season that led some people (who shall remain nameless 😛 ) to pine for Casey DeSmith as a possible playoff starter, I’m not sure anyone would argue that Oettinger didn’t leave everything on the table and give Dallas enough to win with had they just scored.
And before you turn around and say “well if he was just elite/near-perfect he could have stolen Dallas the games they needed to survive”… Linus Ullmark (who also had a rough/down year) had a .932 SV% this postseason for the Ottawa Senators. You know how many games Ottawa won? Zero. Even near-perfection in net can’t always bail you out against really good hockey teams.
- They only scored, on average, two goals-per-game in 2022 against the Calgary Flames, but only two of those game on the power play, and overall the vibes felt much more like a tightly contested, low-scoring series compared to the one-sided scoring collapses we’ve seen since. ↩︎
- That’s not to absolve Glen Gulutzan and his coaching staff of any of the team’s struggles, mind you. If your team consistently has scoring dry up in the postseason and you bring on board a coach from the team who eliminated you twice and most definitely has not ever had that problem, you kind of expect that problem to get fixed, or at the very least get better. If anything, things seemed even worse this year, power play aside. ↩︎
- In Heiskanen’s defense, however, the puck both times seemed to go just past a forward who was trying to come to a stop and extend their stick out to stop it, so its hard to tell if those were cases of Heiskanen missing the mark or the forward not being ready for it. ↩︎