The Dallas Stars have tossed and turned throughout the offseason in an attempt to shake up their team into steadier contenders.
With the hiring of head coach Ken Hitchcock in Mid-April, the third overall pick in the 2017 National Hockey League Draft followed by a later-first-round pick from the Anaheim Ducks, and the acquisition of NHL All-Star Ben Bishop have things looking up for the Dallas Stars.
General manager Jim Nill is hard at work to solidify his team’s previous place among the top teams in the Western Conference early on. He is adamant upon creating not only a club that’s able to qualify for the postseason, but one that can reemerge as Stanley Cup favorites.
With the prime of Dallas Stars offensive anchors Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin still transpiring, Dallas has no time to waste. They will need not only their youthful depth players to further materialize, but also an uptick in defensive magnificence.
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Also, there will be some growing pains for the Stars under Hitchcock, a coach with a reputation for being hard to play for despite owning a stacked rèsumè. Nonetheless, the Dallas Stars are prepared to win now, and their expectations will certainly be higher than the immense failure of 2016-17’s lopsided season.
Those expectations are fair, most would agree, as the Dallas Stars are still just a season removed from boasting 109 points and the number-one overall seed in the Western Conference. That magical, 2015-16 season, Stars captain Jamie Benn earned a nomination for the Hart Trophy as the League MVP and smooth-skating defenseman John Klingberg racked up numerous Norris Trophy considerations.
It’s not too ridiculous to think that a potential repeat, or at least a possible rehash of their old successes, isn’t a plausible scenario. The Stars, in their heyday of the Mid-2000s, won five consecutive Pacific Division titles under a similar construction: trying to win now by ironing out your preexisting flaws, never rebuilding and restarting from the top.
However, to save ourselves from the all too feasible heartbreak Dallas Stars fans suffer from often, it’s safer to set the bar a tad bit lower. The Stars could wind up like this year’s St. Louis Blues, a team with a comparable lineup construction; third-place in the Central Division, winning one Playoff series in which they were not favored.
They could emulate the same style as the Minnesota Wild, who came off of a disappointing season the prior year to record a franchise record in wins. The Wild, however, dropped their first-round Playoff series, so we really don’t desire that gameplan.
They might be able to implement a Nashville Predators-esque season, wherein they just barely qualify for the postseason yet upend their heavily-favored rivals to reach, potentially, the Stanley Cup Final.
However it plays out, I’ll set the tone I am expecting this season, barring any additional moves from Nill and his crew: finishing second or third in the Central Division, winning their first-round series, and hopefully more, but that’s where I will set the bar. Benn and Seguin will enjoy rejuvenated, 75-point or more seasons and the Stars will return to prominence.
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Expectations ultimately do not matter to a franchise in their hopes of holding the Stanley Cup, but us as Dallas Stars fans deserve a masterful, fun season, reminiscent of 2015-16. Just be careful.