Dallas Stars: 2018-19 Season A Necessary Step For Team’s Future

Though it was filled with twists, turns, excitement, and frustration, the Dallas Stars fell short in their 2018-19 campaign. And while it may seem as though their shortcoming makes the season just as useless as the many preceding it, there’s reason to believe that this past year was a frustratingly important step towards a bright future.

Saturday night was likely a trying time for many Dallas Stars fans.

As Stars fans sat in front of their TVs and watched as the St. Louis Blues were picked apart on their home ice by the Boston Bruins in a 7-2 routing in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final, a certain thought may have crossed your mind at one point or another:

The Stars could have done better than this.

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Or maybe it was a variation of that thought (i.e. Ben Bishop wouldn’t have let that goal go in, the Dallas defense wouldn’t be giving up this many chances, the Stars’ penalty kill wouldn’t have given up four power play goals or even four power play opportunities for that matter).

Regardless of where your mind may have drifted as Game 3 played out, it’s hard not to play the comparison game at this time of the year. It becomes even more difficult when you remember how close the Dallas Stars came to being in the position that St. Louis currently possesses.

But that’s a dangerous and useless game to play at this point. Yes, the Stars took the 2019 Western Conference champions to seven games in the second round. Yes, it looked as though they were destined for great things. And yes, they came within one goal of making those great things a reality. But sometimes things don’t work out the way you want or expect.

Pat Maroon scored the game-winning goal for the Blues in double overtime, clinched the series for the Blues, and sent the Stars home empty-handed for yet another summer. That’s just how it goes sometimes.

And though it’s now been over three weeks since the team finished up exit interviews and went their separate ways for the 2019 summer, the uncertainty and thoughts of what could’ve been still linger.

While that can be a frustrating and stressful exercise to consistently endure as the Stanley Cup Final plays out, it’s okay. In fact, it’s perfectly natural. That’s because the Dallas Stars needed their 2018-19 season to turn out like it did.

"“Right now, it’s still fresh. I think we really had a good chance to go far and compete for a Cup, but we couldn’t get it done this year. It’s still frustrating. When you come to a team and play like this, it plays out in your mind with a different ending.” – Mats Zuccarello on exit interview day"

Sure, winning the Stanley Cup was the ultimate goal and that didn’t happen. With that being said, both the players and management count the season as a loss, although there were some positives to build on.

“If you don’t win the Stanley Cup, the season is a loss,” said Stars forward Tyler Seguin on exit interview day. “It still fully hasn’t sunk in that today is the last day of being at the rink with the exit meetings and stuff. But, all in all, [there’s] a lot to build on.”

“It’s kind of two-fold,” added Stars general manager Jim Nill on the final day. “Our goal is always to win the Stanley Cup. So, did we reach our goal? No. But when you look back, only one team is going to win it. But I feel very confident in where we’re heading, I like the path we’re heading on, and I like how we got to where we’re getting. Life is never going to be easy and there’s going to be bumps on the road. What excites me is we fought through all of those things. I’m excited about the future, but disappointed about the end.”

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And that’s where the focus shifts. While the Dallas Stars didn’t get the job done in 2018-19, it was an important season for the franchise to endure and should lead to positive steps forward in the future.

Let’s step back for a moment to December 2018. The Stars are two months into a new era with a brand new coaching staff. Their offense is still one-dimensional, their defense has been banged up with countless injuries, and the team has yet to really break out of its shell through the first two months of action. By Christmas break, they are sitting outside of the Western Conference playoff picture.

At that moment, it would have been easy (or rather, easier than in past years) to count the season as a loss and begin looking towards the 2019-20 campaign and beyond. With a rookie head coach, injury troubles, and a constantly changing lineup, there were a handful of excuses at the Stars’ disposal.

And yet, they didn’t back down. From Jan. 19 to the end of the year, the Stars put together one of the most dominant stretches in the NHL. They went 20-11-3 to close out the year, secured a berth in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and even won a playoff series against the Central division champion Nashville Predators.

From there, everything seemed to have taken a new perspective and meaning. All of a sudden, hockey was “fun” in Dallas again, fans were showing up in droves to support, and everyone had Stanley Cup fever. The Stars looked like a team built for a deep Cup run and it seemed as though they might have the horses to secure the franchise’s first championship in 20 years.

But, as we know now, that dream fell two rounds short of becoming a reality. Even so, the 2018-19 season provided the Dallas Stars with a great stepping stone.

Take a moment and think about all that the team accomplished in the previous season. The Stars went from being the second-worst defensive unit in the NHL to the second-best in a span of two years. They embraced Jim Montgomery‘s style and turned it into a playoff-caliber scheme. Ben Bishop and Anton Khudobin proved that they can be one of the best goaltending tandems in the NHL, leaving the door open for great success in the crease next season.

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After staying quiet at the 2018 NHL Trade Deadline and his team imploding down the stretch as a result, Jim Nill persistently manned the phones this year and brought in four new players via trade in the weeks leading up to the 2019 deadline. Each move was calculated in an effort to make the team better, and each one was successful in its own right.

Now, the Stars have the sole negotiating rights with Mats Zuccarello, a trade piece that completely revitalized and re-energized the team down the stretch and into the playoffs. He should be a centerpiece of the organization for the next 4-5 years and could be the missing piece that pushes Dallas a step further in the seasons to come.

Young stars like Miro Heiskanen, Roope Hintz, and Jason Dickinson showed flashes of brilliance and proved that they can be difference-makers during the most important time of the year. The 2019-20 season offers them a blank canvas to further prove their skills and potential on. And when that turn comes around, they will have the 2018-19 season to use as a jumping-off point.

The coaching staff stepped up in a big way, making necessary changes and adapting on the fly throughout the year while never crumbling at the hands of adversity. For a first year staff, getting to the second round of the playoffs is an impressive feat. And with 2018-19 in their back pocket, what could the next season(s) look like?

But the question sitting at the center of all of this is: what’s next?

Well, that’s the most exciting and frustrating part of it all. There’s no telling where the Dallas Stars may go. Will they swing for the fences and make the 2019 offseason one of their biggest and busiest yet as they try and go all-in for a 2020 Cup run? Will they pull back and stick to their current lineup in hopes that it can once again carry the torch in the season ahead?

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Will Dallas come up short in yet another year of the primes of Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Alexander Radulov, and Ben Bishop? Will they take it a step further next year and pull their way into the Western Conference Final or further?

Those are questions that will be answered in the months and year ahead.

But while we wait, it’s necessary to point out the important step that the 2018-19 season provided. A new coaching staff came in and found a way to thrive in its first year. The team rebounded from a slow start, generated chemistry as an entire unit, and surged towards the finish line. Playoff hockey returned to Dallas, giving fans and analysts a reminder of how good this team can be when everything clicks. And finally, the season showed the Stars just how high they can reach after the two previous seasons seemed to set limitations on the hopes and aspirations of the franchise.

The 2018-19 season showed that the Dallas Stars aren’t just a playoff hopeful, but a team that deserves a mention in the Stanley Cup debate. As a result, you may not feel the same sense of regret and longing that you have felt in the other offseason periods. That’s okay, because the hope is that this summer isn’t going to be like the other summers, especially after the season they just pieced together.

Winning in today’s NHL isn’t based on getting lucky. Instead, it has to do with making mistakes, learning from them, and being better, smarter, and more prepared than you were in the season before. The Bruins have worked for six years to get back to the Stanley Cup Final. The Blues, on the other hand, have put in 49 seasons trying to get back to the spot that they now find themselves in.

It’s a challenging league, and only the teams that are willing to adapt end up progressing forward.

The Dallas Stars did that in the 2018-19 season. And though they came up nine wins short of their ultimate goal, the season proved to be a beneficial one in regards to their future.

The next question will be whether they can capitalize on it or not.