Dallas Stars: Final Games Of Season Will Tell A Lot About Team

A mere 10 games separate the Dallas Stars from a long and much needed offseason. These final 10 games will tell a lot about the direction in which the team is headed.

In 17 days, the Dallas Stars will be done with hockey and enter the offseason, leaving voids to fill in many lives. Just think about and digest that fact for a second.

For some, it may not be coming fast enough. For others, there’s likely a few that aren’t ready for it to end, no matter how the Stars are playing.

But in 17 days, it doesn’t matter. It will all be over, and the Dallas Stars will officially close the book on their 2016-17 season. It’s safe to say that this season has been nowhere near what anyone expected it to be.

There still remains games to be played and things to be done, though. For instance, the Stars still have ten more duels to deal with. But for a team with a 29-33-10 record, it doesn’t seem like these games will have any significant impact at all.

Dallas Stars

But strangely enough, they do. These games will mean a lot in terms of where the Dallas Stars are headed in the future. Not only the status of the team, but also the direction.

The Stars has dealt with a lot of issues this year, including injuries, inconsistency, and an overall struggle with replicating the greatness that was 2015-16. Just one year ago today, the Stars clinched a playoff berth and eventually finished the season as the best team in the Central Division and Western Conference. It’s obvious that they have fallen a long way since then.

Where are they going, though? Is there still an upwards trend within the organization that will be able to repel this one bad season? Or is there significant work that needs to be done that one offseason just cannot achieve?

Either way, the Stars have ten games to play before they get to those decisions, and each one still carries weight.

Tomorrow night, Dallas will face off with the Chicago Blackhawks in the Windy City, only to turn immediately back around and welcome the San Jose Sharks to Big D on Friday night.

Following that, they will play eight games in 14 days, visiting the New Jersey Devils, Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins, Carolina Hurricanes, and Tampa Bay Lightning on the road and finishing the season up at home against the Arizona Coyotes, Nashville Predators, and Colorado Avalanche. And after that, it’s all over (just in case you might not have your head wrapped around this yet).

In each of these games, Dallas has an opportunity to prove themselves. Throughout the season, they have had some trouble with doing this. On Monday night, they proved that they can still be an impressive team when they want to be by defeating the Sharks 1-0 at home in a high-intensity matchup.

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When you think about it, the Dallas Stars turned into a young team practically overnight. That’s primarily because of the trade deadline when the Stars sent Patrick Eaves, Jordie Benn, Johnny Oduya, and Lauri Korpikoski to new homes as a part of their selling process.

The Dallas Stars currently have nine forwards on their roster who are under the age of 28. Three of them are rookies. Only Patrick Sharp, Jason Spezza, Adam Cracknell, and Jiri Hudler are over the gap. Six of their seven defenders are 26 or younger.

Considering these final ten games mean nothing to the Stars’ minuscule playoff hopes, they will offer the players a chance to focus more on their team play and personal game than the result. In addition, the Stars will be playing some of the better competition that the NHL has to offer (seven of the ten teams they meet with have a good shot at being playoff-bound).

Next: Kari Lehtonen Needs To Stick Around For Next Season

It’s going to be interesting to see how they take on the opportunity that they have been presented with. It’s an opportunity to rally together and get better as a team before October. There’s no more strings attached to these games. It’s nothing but playing to get better in preparation for 2017-18. Let’s just hope that season goes a little better than this one.