Dallas Stars May Be Finding Their Third Period Prowess

In a world and a sport where it can be a whole lot easier to start strong than to finish that way, the Dallas Stars are finding the motivation to play with heart all the way through.

With the end of the semester, and year, in hand, a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot of lately is ‘finish strong.’ As an instructor of an undergraduate composition course, I’ve been more than guilty of imploring students to apply this axiom to their end-of-semester pursuits.

One reason it’s such a popular phrase, in my opinion, is its relevance. I mean, we all know how to start strong, when emotions light fires under us and motivations and inspirations for hard work and determination are at their peak. We never need anyone to tell us to ‘start strong.’

It’s when we are nearing the completion of something, when we are spent and our emotions are no longer working in our favor and our motivation and determination have all but dried up. It’s when we can rationalize quitting more easily than we can finishing out the small stretch ahead of us.

It’s those times when we need someone to push and tell us to finish with the same vigor that propelled us to a strong start, despite what our emotions are telling us.

I think this is something that the Dallas Stars are learning. And by learning, I mean really experiencing and taking to heart. Something else that you figure out as a college instructor is that brain-learning is really a far cry from real learning.

Until you can apply an idea or concept to your own life, understanding that the idea is good or should be applied is useless. Until head knowledge gets follow-through with hand knowledge, no real, valuable learning has taken place.

The Stars have had head-knowledge of finishing strong for a while. The fact that they can do it sometimes is proof enough of that.

You’d have to be a little (and by a little, I mean a lot) dense to play in this league and miss the importance of finishing strong, the importance of a third period. So the Stars know this already.

But they’ve had trouble letting it take root. They’ve struggled with giving up leads, becoming an entirely different team in the last twenty minutes of a game than they were in the first, and giving up completely when the chips seem to be down.

However, it looks like the Stars are taking steps in the right direction to apply the hand- or, skate- knowledge to make the concept of finishing strong a reality.

And now, for an inception moment: not only must the Stars continue to finish their games strong in the final frame, but they have the chance to finish out their homestand strong as well, if they continue to do so on the smaller level with individual games.

So what components help the Stars to finish strong? There’s a lot of technical and psychological moving parts. Mental toughness plays a huge role. We’ve seen mental toughness help the progressive reformation of the Stars’ goaltending.

We’ve seen it come into play with the less-than-veteran forwards who have contributed, despite setbacks and injury, to keep the Stars afloat. We saw it in Saturday’s victorious tilt against the Flyers and their intimidating 10 game winning streak.

Historically, the Stars have allowed the lack of true mental grit to destroy their play from a technical standpoint. Turnovers are my favorite example, aka my pet peeve, and we all probably have one or two things that we immediately think of. Missed scoring chances, weakness in neutral ice, lack of cooperation, you name it. But if it’s suffering, it probably goes back to mental toughness that the Stars allowed to be destroyed by circumstance.

And that’s the real key to finishing strong. It’s denying circumstance, denying emotions (which, in case no one ever told you, can sometimes lie to you), and respecting the effort and work you put into your beginning enough to treat your ending with the same care and dedication.

On the simplest level, it’s really just giving yourself a fair shake and respecting yourself enough to allow yourself to live up to all you can be.

Next: Dallas Stars Might Have Found Just What They Needed

And it seems like that’s where the Dallas Stars are headed. This season, they’ve fought through obstacles and disappointments, injuries and droughts to get to where they are now. And they do the same thing consistently in every game they play. Now, it seems the Stars are ready to start being consistent in their endings and finishing strong, too.