Dallas Stars: Five Reasons They Miss The 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs

1. Players Don’t Buy In To Ken Hitchcock

The hiring of Ken Hitchcock will likely prove to be the Dallas Stars’ biggest gain or mistake this season, and there really isn’t much middle ground on the subject.

When the Stars parted ways with Lindy Ruff the day after the 2016-17 regular season finale, GM Jim Nill made it clear that Dallas wanted to be quick in their hunt for a replacement. That replaced came just four days later when they announced the hiring of Ken Hitchcock.

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With the hiring, Hitchcock will start his second tour of duty with the Dallas Stars organization, and it may be tough for him to top the successes that he saw in his first term.

He served as head coach for Dallas from the middle of the 1995-96 season to the middle of the 2001-02 season and enjoyed a plethora of success. In every full season that he coached Dallas, the team finished first in their division. They made the playoffs every year and won the Stanley Cup in 1999, just two seasons after Hitchcock began his term. They went back to the Final in 2000, but fell to the New Jersey Devils.

In this go around, Hitchcock has plenty of talent to work with, similar to his situation in the late 1990’s. But the real question is whether or not the talent will want to work with him.

A standout feature in Hitchcock’s coaching style is his aggressive desire for results. He gets them more often than not, but his style can be seen as a tad overreaching.

For example, Stars legend Mike Modano told 1310 The Ticket about Hitchcock’s coaching strategy just after Hitchcock’s hiring in April. He mentioned how intense Hitch can be and about how Hitchcock would call him each night before a game to ask him how he was planning on contributing the next night.

Luckily, the team in the 1990’s bought into the style for long enough to win a Cup. But his style burnt out in 2001 and the players became disinterested, signaling Hitchcock’s exit.

This is a similar team to the one in 1996 in terms of makeup and skill. But it will be interesting to see whether all of the roster buys in.

Hitchcock has never been a long-term fix in his tenure in the NHL because of his style. If the current Stars don’t buy in and give him all of their attention and effort, this season could be just as disastrous as last year.

2. The Goaltending Tandem Falters

When the 2016-17 season ended, there were plenty of things to fix on the Dallas Stars’ offseason to-do list. Near the top of the list was the goaltending setup.

After a failed year with the tandem of Kari Lehtonen and Antti Niemi, it was clear that Dallas had avoided making any massive changes for long enough. It was time to make a drastic, franchise-altering move. And that’s what Dallas did by trading for and signing elite goaltender Ben Bishop.

With the addition of Bishop and buyout of Antti Niemi, the Stars revamped their crease. Not only is Bishop younger, but it is obvious that his skills are far more polished and relevant. He was a Vezina finalist in 2016, led the Tampa Bay Lightning to two straight Eastern Conference Finals, along with a Stanley Cup appearance in 2015.

At the age of 30, he has yet to lift the Cup. But with a powerful offense and capable defense in front of him along with a reliable backup in Kari Lehtonen, he may have a good shot at lifting it in the near future.

But what if it doesn’t go as planned?

SenShot

There are a few potential pitfalls with the Stars’ new plan for the crease.

The biggest one most likely lies in whether Bishop’s style will be able to mesh with a young defense. In Tampa Bay (where Bishop has spent the majority of his career so far), he played behind an experienced and veteran defensive group, giving him plenty of confidence and added potential.

In Dallas, he won’t necessarily have that. Besides Marc Methot and Dan Hamhuis, the rest of the projected starters for the Stars this season are 27 years or younger. And while the Stars’ blue line should be considerably better with a new scheme and more experience, there may be some kinks, especially early on.

If Bishop isn’t ready to potentially take on an increased load, the goaltending tandem could see a struggle.

The other potential pitfall will be Kari Lehtonen as the full-time backup. It’s been eight years since the 33-year-old Finn played this role, and it could take some time to adjust. He has played in over 50 percent of Stars’ games since 2010, including a 69-game season in 2010-11 and 65-game seasons in 2013-14 and 2014-15. To immediately drop down to 25-30 games might require some getting used to.

Lehtonen has already seen a slight decrease over the past two years with the presence of Niemi, but becoming a full-time backup at the age of 33 and trying to manage his time and patience could prove to be a challenge.

3. The Injury Bug Always Bites

Even after a quiet 2016 offseason that saw more go than come for the Dallas Stars, the expectations were still through the roof for the young team. An assured playoff berth mixed with at least an appearance in the second round of the playoffs seemed to be the standard for the team.

And the Stars very well might have at least gotten to the playoffs if they had started the season on the right foot. But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the injury bug punished Dallas. Before the season even started, players from the Dallas Stars began dropping like flies, including Jamie Benn in offseason training and Tyler Seguin and Radek Faksa in the World Cup of Hockey. These players all recovered in time for opening night, but they were the lucky ones.

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On opening night, the Stars were missing Mattias Janmark, Cody Eakin, and Ales Hemsky. Those are three forwards from their starting roster. Janmark would miss the entire season and Hemsky would play in just one game between opening night and the month of March. Eakin missed the first four weeks of the season before coming back in, though he never seemed to find his stride throughout the remainder of the year, which inevitably helped in crafting his future in the NHL.

But that’s not the worst of it. As the first two months of the season dragged on, players like Jason Spezza, Patrick Sharp, Jiri Hudler, and Johnny Oduya all missed significant time, leaving a gaping hole in the Dallas roster. With these critical players missing, the Stars struggled to string wins together early on and dug themselves a significant hole.

The worst part about the injury bug is that it freely chooses its victims and no teams can completely hide from it. That being said, the Dallas Stars might have another season riddled with injuries ahead.

Now of course, there’s really no way to analyze or predict this. But the possibility of injury occurring to key players throughout a regular season is always evident. If the Stars take on a heap of injuries throughout the year, it could lead to some severe consequences.

4. Setting The Bar Too High

It’s common for a team like the Chicago Blackhawks to have their expectations set high in the preseason. Whether you respect them or absolutely despise them (or both), they always get results. That’s why the bar is always so high for them.

And that’s why the Hawks being swept in the first round of the 2017 playoffs was such a shock and brought about great change in the organization. With great power comes great expectations (it’s close enough to the actual saying).

Setting the bar high can be fun, but it can also be very dangerous at times. The Dallas Stars seem to have the bar set relatively high for them at the end of every offseason since the Jim Nill era began.

Nill and the Stars have a knack for bringing in the best talent on the market in each offseason. Names like Tyler Seguin, Jason Spezza, Ales Hemsky, Patrick Sharp, and Johnny Oduya have come to Dallas over the past few seasons.

But with their arrivals comes heightened expectations. And as we’ve seen from the recent past with the Stars, these expectations can come back to haunt them and their fan base.

After breaking a five year playoff drought in 2014, the Stars were expected to do well in the 2014-15 season. Instead, they fell seven points short of a playoff spot. And after winning the Central Division in the 2015-16 season, there were rumors of a Stanley Cup run potentially happening in Dallas. Instead, the Stars followed 2015-16 up with the second worst season in franchise history.

Giving a team an unrealistic bar before they even hit the ice can be a drastic mistake. While the Stars do look good on paper after an excellent 2017 offseason campaign, there’s no certainty that they are going to take the cake this season (or even make the playoffs for that matter).

Qualifying for the playoffs is a special event, and it takes plenty of grit and consistency along the way.

If the Dallas Stars cannot find that consistency and answer the bell that their fans and the league have set for them, the playoffs may not be such a realistic possibility after all.

5. The Western Conference Is Still Deep

With the addition of the Vegas Golden Knights this past offseason, the Western Conference now has 15 teams. Seven of them are in the Central Division and eight are in the Pacific Division.

Of those 15 teams, only eight will qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And while it looks as though the Dallas Stars have a realistic shot at being one of those eight teams, you can never be too sure. After all, the Western Conference is still stocked with plenty of talent.

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Take the Central Division for example. The St. Louis Blues and Minnesota Wild have been productive powerhouses within the division for the past few years, and have consecutively made the playoffs. Neither got substantially weaker in the offseason and kept their prime group around, so you should expect to see them challenging for postseason spots this year.

While the Blackhawks did lose a good amount during this offseason due to another cap crisis, they  have an impressive postseason streak going and always seem to find a way to make things work and stay in contention. With that being said, it might not be the best idea to bet on them missing the postseason this year.

Then we have the Nashville Predators, who entered the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs as the “last team in” but put together one of the most dominant and unthinkable runs. Though they lost in the Cup Final to the Penguins, their postseason performance and offseason endeavors made them the early favorite to not only win the Central Division, but also make another run at the Cup.

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That’s four of the eight spots taken up. On the Pacific Division side, the San Jose Sharks, Edmonton Oilers, Anaheim Ducks, and Calgary Flames all have a strong shot at contending for a playoff spot just as they did last year.

If the Stars are going to make the playoffs, they likely have four available spots (assuming that the Pacific Division will take up the other four). With teams like Nashville, Chicago, St. Louis, and Minnesota in their way from last year, they’re going to need some extra power.

All in all, the Western Conference is still going to be tough to fight through. If the Stars can pull another 2015-16 run and take the division and conference by surprise, then they should be alright. But can they do it? It will all depend on how it plays out once they hit the ice.

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This season is definitely going to be an interesting one. While the Dallas Stars likely won the offseason, they will have to keep the victory rolling come October 6. There’s reasons to be hopeful and reasons to be fearful. But in the end, that’s what being a sports fan is all about.