Dallas Stars, Chicago Blackhawks Experienced Similar Fates
The 2015-16 Dallas Stars and 2016-17 Chicago Blackhawks had very similar seasons. Surprisingly enough, they both ended much too early.
The Dallas Stars were the 2016 Western Conference regular season winners and earned the title in the Central Division. In 2017, those same titles were bestowed upon the Chicago Blackhawks.
While it is coincidental that both teams were underwhelming in their respective postseason performances, there are a few reasons why that happened in back-to-back seasons.
Regular Season
As easy as it is to say that the regular season is a different beast than the playoffs, the lines become blurred in the craziness that is the end of the season. Both the Stars and the Hawks went into the postseason with what looked to be momentum, but they ultimately met their fate.
There are a few reasons why this happens, though. First off the regular season is spread out over the course of a number of months. There is time to recuperate from injuries or bad stretches, while in the playoffs it is do or die.
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Second, there is variety in opponents during the regular season. It is playing teams with a lot of different strengths and weaknesses and learning from those, where as the postseason is all about beating one team four times in order to move forward with the same goal against another organization.
These two reasons are largely why the regular season and playoffs vary, but a number of other factors influence this as well. One being the pressure is immensely more intense in the postseason because every single game counts. While it could be argued that every regular season game counts, it is unrealistic to expect teams to play their best for an 82 game season.
Ultimately the differences between the regular season and postseason prove to be enough that going in to mid-April atop the conference means less than everyone thinks it does.
Playoffs
To put it plainly, the playoffs are a different beast. They do not benefit one team over another simply based on how they ended the regular season, a fact which has been evident over the last few years. Seeding in the playoffs merely determines which arena will have more hosting time, not which team will move on to the next round.
Although the 2016-17 regular season did not go as planned for the Stars, they can be happy that they did not make it to the playoffs only to be embarrassed in the first round. While critics will say that making the playoffs is always better than not, which is true in a lot of cases, it is demeaning to make it with such high expectations only to be eliminated early.
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Nonetheless, both the Stars and the Blackhawks will enter the 2017-18 season with a vengeance. They will be looking to rebound from less than desirable results this year in hopes of adding an additional Stanley Cup banner to their respective arenas.