Whenever a team wins the Stanley Cup, the team that feels the worst about it is the team they just beat. As Dallas Stars fans remember so well from 2020, the feeling of making it so far just to fall short at the very end just feels soul crushing. Whether you get swept or lose in a Game 7 overtime, it feels like you had your shot at glory, only for it to slip through your fingers.
The team that lost to the Cup champions in the Conference Finals might feel almost as bad.
I mean sure, the team didn’t make the Final, but they still only lost a series to the eventual Champion – that’s not so different than the Cup Final loser. And then there’s the “what if” factor, where you can imagine what would have happened if the team had won the Conference Final. It’s easy to imagine the team in the Cup winner’s skates, thinking they’d match up just as well if not better against the other Conference champion. The runner-up doesn’t have that luxury – they already lost to one of the last two teams.
That “what if” factor gets amplified only more when the team played better against the Cup Champion than the runner-up, as is the case this year with the Dallas Stars compared to the Florida Panthers. Sure, Dallas also got blown out twice by the Vegas Golden Knights (and both at home). But they also won a second game, should have won a third, and went to overtime in another loss. In fact, outside of those two blowout losses, you could make the case that Dallas was the better team across the other four games – you can’t say the same about Florida.
So it’d be hard to blame the Stars (and their fans) for thinking they were so close, and were just one Ryan Suter mishap away from potentially lifting the Cup. That, perhaps, they can just “run it back” next year and, with some better performances from Jake Oettinger and others, get their names etched in silver.
On the other hand, you could look at the Golden Knights’ Cup win as a sign of all the things Dallas didn’t do well, and thus how far they have to go before they could win it all. Sure, luck plays a part in crowning a champion, but there’s a reason why, each year, the Cup winner was a Cup favorite heading in.
So here’s a (relatively) short list of the right (and wrong) takeaways Dallas should take from the Golden Knights’ Stanley Cup victory:
Right: You Need a Strong Blueline
The Dallas Stars have one of the NHL’s best on defense in Miro Heiskanen. But after that, there’s not much to be envious about. Thomas Harley was the team’s second best defenseman, and he’s a 21 year-old who didn’t join the team until the end of the NHL season. The team’s third best was their typical seventh defenseman in Joel Hanley. Ouch.
In contrast, Vegas has Alex Pietrangelo, who, like Heiskanen, has never been a Norris finalist, but arguably should have been by now. And he’s arguably not even their best defenseman – that distinction probably belongs to Shea Theodore. Then you have solid-to-strong performances from the entirety of the remaining blueline: Zach Whitecloud, Alec Martinez, Nicolas Hague, and Brayden McNabb. There were no weaknesses on Vegas’ defense for teams to exploit.
Maybe that’s too high of a bar to expect for any team, let alone Dallas, but the point remains: the Stars’ blueline was a soft spot all season, and it needs to improve (whether internally or externally) for Dallas to be in better shape.
Wrong: That Defense Needs to be BIG
Martinez is the Golden Knights’ shortest defenseman at 6′ 1″. Theodore is the lightest at 197 pounds. And when it comes to “playoff hockey,” size and physicality matter. So obviously the Stars just need to bulk up on the blueline, right?
Except the Stars’ biggest defensemen, Esa Lindell and Jani Hakanpää, were the team’s greatest liability in the postseason. And while it’s a different position, you’re gonna have a hard time convincing me size matters most when 5′ 9″ forward Jonathan Marchessault just won the Conn Smythe.
Honestly, I’m not even sure why we keep having this debate. Size matters, but only if you use it well (see: Harley, Thomas). Going after heavy, physical players just for their size alone is not going to win you any Cups.
Right: You Need a Rested Goaltender
Jake Oettinger played more games than any other goaltender this season, thanks to an injury to backup Scott Wedgewood and a deep run by Dallas. Maybe it’s just correlation, but it’s hard to imagine that wasn’t a main reason why Oettinger, who has been one of the NHL’s best since entering the league, looked so awful against the Seattle Kraken in the second round and average at best against Vegas in the third.
In contrast, Adin Hill played just 27 regular season games, behind only rookie Logan Thompson’s 37. Heck, he didn’t even start in the playoffs until he came in halfway through the Edmonton Oilers series in relief for Laurent Brossoit. And while they didn’t win it all, Sergei Bobrovsky was similarly rested before his fantastic run for the Panthers.
Now, granted, I’m not arguing Dallas should try and play Oettinger less than half their games or anything crazy like that. But they need to invest in goaltending depth, specifically by acquiring a third goaltender who they trust to play (and win) NHL games in case of injury to one of their two NHL goaltenders again. No more of this “ride and die” mentality.
Wrong: An Elite Oettinger Will Fix Everything
Okay, so now you have a rested Oettinger heading into the postseason. That means he’ll put in performances like the Minnesota Wild series this year and the Calgary Flames last year, right? If Dallas had that type of performance this year, they probably would have beaten Seattle handily and might have won both of those overtime games against Vegas, sending them to the Cup Final.
That’s all fine and dandy, except look what happened to Bobrovsky, who was amazing until he suddenly wasn’t at the end. Better yet, look at Frederik Andersen, who was fantastic throughout his entire run with a .927 SV%, a .778 QS%, and 5.4 GSAA. You know what happened to the Carolina Hurricanes? They got swept in the Conference Finals.
Top tier goaltending can help you make deep runs, but it can’t be the only factor if you want to win it all – Florida and (to an extent) Carolina learned that the hard way. Heck, the Colorado Avalanche last season proved that you don’t even need elite goaltending to win it all, although every other Cup winner of the last decade or so has had it. Point remains: a better Oettinger will go a long way, but it can’t be the only improvement.
Right: Forward Depth is Important
This season, the Stars had arguably the league’s best top line, a very strong “third” line, and a second line that was a bit inconsistent, but across the season was above average. Their weakest spot was on the fourth line, where Radek Faksa had a surprisingly good offensive season but the others were average at best.
By all accounts, the Stars had decent forward depth. Yet they were clearly outmatched in that category by the Seattle Kraken, who are literally the personification of depth. Given they’re a recent expansion team, that’s perhaps an unreasonable bar to reach, but the Golden Knights also had incredible forward depth. Their fourth line in particular ate Dallas alive, sometimes even out-dueling the Stars’ best player in Miro Heiskanen.
That forward depth came into play again in Vegas’ series against the Panthers, where the latter was clearly outmatched. And we already talked about the blueline, where Vegas was very strong and Dallas was pitiful. I often say the reasonable expectation you should have for your fourth line is to eat up minutes and not have a negative impact. The Stars’ trio did that most games, but if the team truly wants to be better, they could do well to have a fourth line that’s a difference maker too.
Wrong: Focus on Improving Secondary and Depth Scoring
The Golden Knights’ top scorer this regular season was Jack Eichel, who topped off at 66 points – that would have been sixth on the Stars behind defenseman Miro Heiskanen’s 73. Eichel similarly led Vegas (and the NHL) in playoff scoring with 26 points in 22 games. That’s very good, but he also finished the postseason with a 12 game goal-scoring drought, his last coming against the Oilers in Game 5 in the second round.
In contrast, Roope Hintz and Matthew Tkachuk were tied for third in playoff scoring with 24 points with 19 and 20 games played respectively. Connor McDavid was 6th with 20 points in just 12(!) games. Leon Draisaitl was 8th with 20 points (also in 12 games), and was still tied for first in goals with 13 in almost half as many games as Jonathan Marchessault.
Now, Vegas was still a high scoring team in the postseason, but a lot of that came from outside of their top line, or what you’d consider to be secondary or depth scoring. So you could – and to be clear, I’m not saying anyone actually is – argue that monstrous performances from your top players are overrated, and that your focus should be on improving your secondary and depth scoring.
Except that would also be ignoring the dominant performances from the top scorers from the Colorado Avalanche and Tampa Bay Lightning over the past three seasons. Then there’s the Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Chicago Blackhawks before years before that. Pretty much every prior recent winner except the St. Louis Blues in 2019, really.
Why do I bring this up? This offseason, there might be a fixation in the Stars’ front office to improve the second and fourth lines, whether that be re-signing Max Domi or Evgenii Dadonov or making an external acquisition. To find someone who can help elevate Mason Marchment after a lackluster first season in Dallas, someone who can succeed where Denis Gurianov failed in being the perfect partner for him and Tyler Seguin.
That was the strategy Dallas had at the trade deadline, with the only defensive improvement being a late season gamble on Thomas Harley that thankfully panned out. Yet Dallas still fell short. That’s not to say they shouldn’t try and improve their forward group, rather that they can’t let it distract them from the season’s top priority: improving the team’s blueline, regardless of how difficult the current roster construction makes that.
Right: You Need to Be Bold
We’ll finish off with the same talking point most media around the league are saying about what teams should copy from Vegas. At their expansion draft, the Golden Knights’ front office took advantage of NHL GM’s overvaluing their own players and acquired several core players (e.g. Marchessault, Reilly Smith, Theodore) and a boatload of picks.
They then used those picks (and their own) to acquire players like Mark Stone and Jack Eichel, and pounced on free agents like Alex Pietrangelo. And when those gambles didn’t pan out, like Max Pacioretty or Thomas Tatar? They cut their losses and moved on, sometimes being rather cold if not downright ruthless to their players in the process (see: Fleury, Marc-Andre).
If there’s a high-end player available on the market, you can be rest assured that Vegas is listed as a potential destination, current salary cap space be damned. Meanwhile, in Dallas, Jim Nill’s catch phrase is “I like where our team is at,” and as Sean Shapiro will say, he can often be loyal to a fault when it comes to dealing with failed experiments. The Stars are often in talks as potential destinations for those top tier players – remember John Tavares and Erik Karlsson? – but the Stars haven’t pulled the trigger (for better or worse) since Nill’s early days.
If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that Nill might be changing his tune. The Stars did the unthinkable and actually traded their first round pick last offseason for Nils Lundkvist, and while the results so far have been disappointing, that’s the kind of move fans often criticize Nill for not making. Dallas is in win-now mode with picks and prospects that could tantalize many NHL teams looking to move a skilled player, whether it be due to the player requesting a trade or the salary cap squeezing someone out.
Of course, Dallas has their own cap issues to deal with. And odds are, recent history will prevail and the Stars will be fairly conservative. But the start of Nill’s tenure with Dallas was highlighted by annual blockbuster trades – perhaps he has at least one more up his sleeve.