The Dallas Stars have been chasing a top three spot in the Central Division for months. However, it’s best they stay put, if possible.
On Sunday afternoon, the Dallas Stars dropped an embarrassing 6-0 decision to the visiting Vancouver Canucks at American Airlines Center in Big D. The loss was the first in six games for the Stars, a team that missed a massive opportunity in the loss.
Following the Pittsburgh Penguins’ defeat of Central Division mainstay St. Louis, the Stars were within a win of passing the Blues for third-place in the National Hockey League’s most competitive division.
In addition, the Winnipeg Jets – also pacing the Stars in points – were downed at home on Sunday by the lowly New York Rangers. To say the Stars swung and miss isn’t enough, they swung and missed on a hanging curveball right over the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out (I miss baseball).
However, it’s best the Stars stay put. Yeah, being a Wild Card team is to swerve in and out of true Stanley Cup contention and lose winnable games – but with the division tougher than ever, this might be the ultimate winning strategy.
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You are probably asking why. Well, the NHL’s certifiably silly format that fails to reward regular season success, while trying its hardest to implement early-round rivalry fun, is stupid. On account of its audacity, the Stars, the fifth-ranked team in the Western Conference, are a bubble team at best.
Due to the divisional format, the leading team in either conference plays that conference’s second wild card team; the second-ranked squadron battles the first wild card team. In divisional play, the Central and Pacific’s two runners-up drop the puck against each other – right now St. Louis vs Winnipeg and Los Angeles vs San Jose.
Instead of playing the fourth-ranked team, the St. Louis Blues, the Stars would instead take on Nashville, the second-ranked squad. Nashville, though, lies just a point behind the Vegas Golden Knights for the Western Conference regular season crown. If you’re a Stars fan, you should probably want this to happen.
If that occurs, and Dallas remains in the first wild card spot (currently four points up on the Minnesota Wild), it’s Vegas coming to the AAC for postseason action – a much more favorable opponent. Though the Stars’ record of 1-2-0 is the same against both Nashville and Vegas, Dallas allows four goals a game with the Predators as their opponents.
Dallas Stars
The Preds hold a 12-7 goal advantage over the Stars in their season series. Meanwhile, the Knights and Stars are level at seven goals a piece in three games in 2017-18. Especially in postseason hockey, where goals are often at a premium, that even goal differential – and team construction, to a degree – will be beneficial.
Looking after a potential Vegas vs Dallas playoff series, the Stars are better off in a wild card spot with their round two matchup in mind. Against the Pacific Division this season, the Stars have posted a 10-5-0 record, compared to 9-10-0 against Central Division counterparts.
If the Dallas Stars fall into the Golden Knights’ Pacific Division bracket, their second-round matchup will consist of four to seven games against a San Jose, Los Angeles, or Calgary type team. Though it’s unwise to discount teams such as those three, the Central’s fourth-place team, Dallas, has more points than all three of them.
If you take out the Avalanche and Blackhawks, the two non-playoff teams in the Dallas Stars’ division, the boys in Victory Green have three wins in divisional play all year long. To take advantage of a playoff format that almost nobody likes, paving a far easier path to Stanley Cup immortality, is possible, but only in one way.
Of course, it’s difficult to walk into a locker room and say “Hey, let’s lose some games so we can have a wild card spot instead of a top-three Central position,” but when the Stars drop games in such disastrous fashions as the events of Sunday, things remain fine. Arguably, the outlook gets better if the Stars balance winning and losing.
Next: Dallas Stars Becoming Serious Threat for Stanley Cup
It’s a fine line to walk, and there are far too many moving parts to account for, but a wild card place in the Western Conference playoffs could prove to be the best highway to postseason success.