Dallas Stars Have Strange Recurrence With Opening Night Opponent
With the NHL reportedly releasing home opener opponents today for all 31 NHL teams, it seems like a good time to point out an eerily consistent pattern that has determined the Dallas Stars’ home opener opponent for the past few years.
Today is the day. Hockey fans have been waiting for this day since the summer of 2015 when talks of an expansion team in the NHL first started gaining speed.
Tonight, the Vegas Golden Knights will announce their inaugural roster at the NHL Awards show after 72 hours of deliberating over the 30 exposed lists they received from teams as well as multiple trade offers. There has been plenty of speculation as to what their final roster will look like, but all of that will be put to bed in just a few hours.
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Following the announcement, things will get even crazier as Vegas begins trade negotiations with different teams who will be looking to scoop up one of their newly acquired players.
The expansion draft and awards show will make this a rather intriguing and action-packed Wednesday. But those don’t come along until later on this evening. Until then, what are we supposed to do? Speculate more? Not necessarily.
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What many hockey fans may not know or may have forgotten about is the league-wide event scheduled to happen at 11 a.m. CT today. It was reported last week by Stephen Whyno of the AP that the NHL would release the home openers for every team today and that they would release the entire NHL regular season schedule on Thursday afternoon.
That means that in just a few hours, we should be finding out who the Dallas Stars will open their season at the American Airlines Center against in October. The training camp and preseason schedules were released a few weeks back, and today we will find out who the Stars’ first home game will be against and will likely be able to decipher whether they open their season at home or on the road.
As I was thinking back on the last few home openers (considering the Stars have started their season at home for the past six seasons, which is an incredible streak), I came across a rather interesting pattern that the Dallas Stars’ schedule has followed in regards to who the Stars open at home against.
The NHL realigned in the summer of 2013 and went to a four-division format instead of the previous six-division format. With the new look, the Western Conference houses the Central and Pacific divisions, while the Eastern Conference houses the Metropolitan and Atlantic divisions.
The Dallas Stars were placed in the Central Division, and on October 3rd, 2013, they started a new journey (with new management, a new-looking team, and new jerseys) as they kicked off their season at home against the Florida Panthers, a team in the Atlantic Division.
The next year, they opened at home against the Chicago Blackhawks, a Central Division rival. To start the 2015-16 season, they welcomed the Pittsburgh Penguins (from the Metropolitan Division) to town to start the year. And you all probably remember the Stars starting this past season with a 4-2 win over the Anaheim Ducks who are members of the Pacific Division.
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Did you notice the pattern? Over the past four season openers (since realignment kicked in), the Stars have played one member from each of the four divisions, alternating between East and West. In order, it’s been Atlantic, Central, Metropolitan, Pacific.
At first, I thought that it was something that the NHL did with all of the teams. But as I began digging through the schedules of other teams, I’ve noticed that this is not the case. This seems almost exclusive to the Dallas Stars, which got me wondering, “Is this just an extremely odd coincidence or is this a specific way that the NHL determines who Dallas opens with?”
There’s no real way of answering that besides simply waiting for the home opener to be announced today. If it does happen to revert back to the beginning of the pattern and the Stars open at home against an Atlantic Division team, then we may be on to something. If not, then it was a fun theory while it lasted.
As a quick refresher, the teams in the Atlantic Division are the Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Detroit Red Wings, and Buffalo Sabres. There could be some very intriguing matchups that come from this theory (yes, we’re looking at you Tampa Bay).
Now this could go one of two ways. If the Stars home opener is against a non-Atlantic team, that doesn’t necessarily mean the theory is a dud. That’s because Dallas could possibly play game one of the season on the road against an Atlantic team. So keep that possibility in mind as well.
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Either way, it’s kind of spooky how the Stars’ scheduling has worked out over the past few years. Here’s to seeing if the tradition stays alive today at 11 a.m.