Troubling history repeating itself for the Dallas Stars

A calamitous 1-3-1 road trip certainly wasn’t the recipe for success as the Dallas Stars conjure up ghosts of collapses past.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. The Dallas Stars are humming along and appear to be a mortal lock for postseason action. But then, they lose their number-one goalie and ultimately slip into oblivion as the regular season hits the home stretch. Sound familiar? Well, if you’ve been paying attention for the past ten days, or so, I’m not referring to last year’s meltdown. I’m referring to this year’s.

And maybe “meltdown” is a little too strong a term for this downturn in the standings. After all, the Stars are still in the thick of the playoff picture. They still have time to write their own script without the help of anyone else. They’re three points clear of Minnesota for the last wild card spot in the Western Conference. Lastly, they’ve got a three-game home stand starting tomorrow night against a Nashville team they seem to match up well against.

So while the situation isn’t exactly hopeless, it isn’t encouraging, either. Not after that five-game winning streak that helped propel them as high as third in the Central Division. No, the 1-3-1 mark on the road trip started off okay, then spiraled into a state of despair, low-lighted by consecutive shutouts at the hands of the spectacular Tampa Bay Lightning and the surprising Carolina Hurricanes.

What makes this team so frustrating to watch at times is how their best players can just disappear. This was apparent during the 6-0 Tampa Bay fiasco. That game was over midway though the first period as the Lightning blitzed them and never looked back. The Carolina game was a much better effort. In fact, the Stars probably should’ve won that game, but Hurricane goalie Peter Mrazek was out of his mind and stymied all 33 shots the Stars put on goal.

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The bottom line is, when the Stars aren’t scoring, they might as well not show up. It’s almost amazing how goal poor this team gets when things aren’t breaking their way. Of course, it’s been about six weeks since team president Jim Lites’s now infamous tirade directed at Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin. In hindsight, he never had to go as public with his remarks as he did. Stuff like that is better handled in house. But from a team standpoint, he wasn’t exactly wrong. When this team is playing well, they’re meeting expectations. When they’re not playing well, they’re woefully underachieving, and this recent road trip only serves to accentuate that sense of underachievement.

So which Stars team will we see in the last twenty-four regular season games? It’ll probably be a lot of the same. The peaks will pique the interest of the fan base and tease us of what could be, but the valleys will also remind us that this team lacks the scoring punch to really threaten anyone if they make the playoffs. It’s a shame, too, because they’re going to end up wasting a pretty historic defensive season all because they can’t get out of their own way on the offensive end.

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Fans in this city don’t want to hear this, considering we’ve been bopped over the head with it countless times from other sources. But for the Dallas Stars, this year is all part of that dreaded “process“. Heck, the head coach said as much the day he stepped in. Considering this franchise’s postseason track record in the past decade, perhaps we should be buoyed by the fact that this bunch is still in the driver’s seat for their playoff destiny despite unprecedented adversity.

Published on 02/18/2019 at 12:01 PM
Last updated at 02/18/2019 at 07:46 AM

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