Missed opportunities and nervous times for the Dallas Stars

The good news? The Dallas Stars still hold the top wild card seed in the West. The bad news? Their grip on that spot could slip away very easily.

On March 14th, the Dallas Stars had just dispatched the Minnesota Wild in St. Paul, MN, 4-1. At the time, it appeared as though the Stars were exerting their will in the wild card picture. Moreover, they started making plans to usurp the St. Louis Blues for third place in the Central Division. The stage was set for them to surge into the playoffs for the first time since the 2015-16 campaign.

Even more encouraging was the notion that the Stars has won six of seven, and were headed home for a five-game home stand. Surely they’d manage to put more space between them and teams below them in the standings. Of course, fate intervened, and the roller coaster season that 2018-19 has been has continued.

The Stars promptly came home and lost four of the five games on the home stand. In fact, their 1-3-1 mark since March 15th has done nothing to improve their situation in a tight Western Conference playoff race. Just ten days ago, a playoff berth seemed like a dead certainty. Today, their grasp on that is tenuous, at best. Make no mistake, it is gut check time for this franchise.

Of course, the sky isn’t exactly falling. The teams still realistically in the wild card race–the Colorados, Minnesotas, and Arizonas of the world–have done a reasonably good job of cancelling each other out and allowing the Stars to more or less stand pat in the standings. And while I’m being relatively sunny about it, Dallas still controls their own playoff destiny. Just win, and the rest will sort itself out.

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The obvious problem lately has been that whole “winning” thing. Sure, seasons go through peaks and valleys, and based on the fact that the Stars had just come off a pretty hot streak, a return to earth was probably something of an inevitability. But there’s also a stat I like to keep track of that doesn’t get a lot of play in the NHL. That would be their actual win-loss record. Of course, the NHL separates overtime or shootout losses in a different column, so overall records can be a bit misleading. To wit, the Stars possess a 38-31-6 record as of this moment. But if you’re looking at just wins and losses, they’re 38-37. If that’s not the epitome of average, I don’t know what is.

That’s not to say there haven’t been stretches of brilliance from this team. They’ve shown, on occasion, that they can play with the best this league has to offer. One need only look at Saturday night’s tilt against Pittsburgh. The Stars dominated play as the game wore on, but they couldn’t get over the hump, and the Penguins put up just enough offense to leave with the win. It’s the loser’s lament, but they deserved better that night, not to mention last Thursday’s game against Colorado.

Nevertheless, the Dallas Stars remain in good shape as they hit their last seven games of the season. It starts tonight with a critical divisional game versus the Winnipeg Jets, and concludes with a jaunt through western Canada with stops in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver. Earlier this season, it would’ve been a grim prospect, but the Stars have won five of their last six on the road. Let’s hope they can keep that up and get closer to to clinching a playoff spot.

• Published on 03/25/2019 at 11:00 AM
• Last updated at 03/25/2019 at 07:37 AM