Dallas Stars Avoiding Trade Deadline Can Pay Off With Right Mindset

The NHL Trade Deadline came and went without the Dallas Stars even so much as making a slight noise. This move is a risky one considering the competition around them upgraded their respective rosters. But if the Stars can focus and lock in the right mindset, their gamble could pay off in a big way.

It’s Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018. It’s the day after the annual NHL Trade Deadline, and all 31 teams are bracing to feel the effects of the moves that were made. That includes the Dallas Stars, who were one of the few teams that did not make a significant deadline move.

Why is that important? Well, because the Stars turned out to be the only team to not make a trade over the past week (Feb. 19-26). And when you look at the big picture, they seemed like a team that needed to make a trade more than any other. Funny how that works.

Coming into the week prior to the deadline, Dallas was in a bit of an odd position. They had played some of their best hockey over the past two months. Starting on Dec. 19, 2017, the Dallas Stars began evolving into a completely new team. This new team was stronger, faster, more skilled, and more focused than its predecessor.

And that showed in the standings. The Stars posted a record of 16-7-2 from Dec. 19, 2017 to Feb. 19, 2018. They closed a ten-point gap between the first wild card spot and third place in the Central Division and finally overtook the St. Louis Blues as the third best team in the division.

Dallas Stars /

Dallas Stars

As strong as the Stars had shown themselves to be, two severely unbalanced losses in a three-game stretch had Dallas second guessing their abilities. While that is an incredibly small sampling size to go off of, it’s something that they had to factor in with the trade deadline looming.

Throughout the remainder of last week, the Dallas Stars dropped two of their three games and once again looked as though they needed help. Their offense had gone dry, their defense looked as though it lacked its prior composure, and neither goaltender could find consistency.

With that being said, the need for a trade seemed imminent, right? Wrong. The Stars exited the trade deadline just as quietly as they had entered, leaving only more questions to be answered. Why didn’t the Stars make a move? Did they just miss out on the last great opportunity to upgrade their group for the playoff push? And considering the tightness of the payoff race in the Western Conference, did Dallas just put their own fate in serious jeopardy?

It’s true that the Dallas Stars passed on their last chance to potentially upgrade their team. It’s also true that the teams around them in the playoff race bought in and stocked their own respective rosters using deadline moves.

But that does not mean the Stars made the “wrong choice” or put their playoff lives in serious jeopardy. As of Tuesday morning, the Dallas Stars sit in sole control of the first wild card spot with a game in hand on the three closest teams below them (Los Angeles, Calgary, St. Louis). While things are still tight, Dallas definitely still controls their own destiny.

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And that’s where this silence at the trade deadline could pay off in a big way. If the Dallas Stars can approach these final 20 games with the correct mindset and the right amount of focus, they can very well punch their ticket to the postseason.

At the moment, the Stars are 35-23-4 with 74 points on the season. They have 20 games remaining and plenty of competition awaits them down that stretch.

But this team as it stands right now can be an elite team. The key words in that sentence are “can be.” The team we have seen over the last two weeks is not an elite team. That’s a team struggling to find its identity and access it on a consistent basis.

The team we saw at the beginning of February, however, is an elite team. That’s a team that can face any obstacle and hop over it with ease on its way to a five-game win streak. That Dallas Stars team can win and do it in a dominant way.

And as the final month of the regular season approaches, it will be up to the Stars to access that mindset. We know it’s there and accessible and so do they. It’s all a matter of finding it and clinging to it for the rest of the race.

Their mindset and level of focus are the keys to the rest of this season. It’s clear that when this team is clicking, it can hang with any kind of competition in the league. But that team isn’t hanging around for nearly long enough.