Dallas Stars Must Start Learning From Mistakes Immediately

With the Dallas Stars’ season coming to a close and coming up empty, it seems they’ve taken one step forward and two steps back since their hyped-up offseason.

Ever since I was in middle school, the idea of dissections fascinated me. Taking apart something to learn how it worked and what had gone wrong with it always seemed more of a utilitarian and necessary function than a gross or morbid one. I suppose that may be why the career path of medical examiner has always appealed to me. But alas, science was never my strong suit.

For normal folks, though, the idea of a post-mortem can maybe get a little off-putting. Death in and of itself is still kind of taboo, and of course the creepiness and possibility of vile smells would be enough to deter almost anyone.

Of course I’m talking about dissection and autopsy from a surface-level C.S.I. standpoint, but Dallas Stars fans this season can probably relate to the idea even more than they realize. Each time the Stars start down this trail and fail, it’s a punch to the gut, as if we’re blindsided by anything less than victory. Like with the C.S.I. version of this metaphor, we want to avoid mundane reality at all costs. But when it comes to the Stars, we’re only allowed our precious escapism in small doses.

If we set out to autopsy the Stars’ almost-gone season, a lot stands in our way. First of all, it’s all been done before– the Stars have a lot of unrealized season dreams haunting their past. Post-mortems can bring closure to painful realities, but one thing they cannot do is change reality.

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For the Stars, this impossibility can be possible for them, but it would require learning and change at a deep level. Dallas Stars fans have taken to Twitter and beyond to voice their opinions on cause of death this season, and many themes have run consistently through the various opinions.

When we patch them altogether, we get a perfect storm of poor leadership on a team and at the organizational level, a GM asleep at the wheel, a system change not fully realized yet, and a team holding onto romanticized ideals of some players while refusing to acknowledge the real and raw potential of others.

The fact that the Dallas Stars moved around so many pieces over the summer, moves that were hailed at the time as genius and game-changing, and were still unable to use the changes to their advantage screams of problems that go far deeper than surface level. The Stars have successfully generated a working goalie system, and cultivated existing talent into something bigger and better. But at this present time, it’s not bigger and better enough.

With only a handful of games left in the current season, the Stars aren’t really in a place to overhaul their whole mentality, which is a dead horse I’ve been beating for a while. And while the Stars’ 25th anniversary season followed by the first ever NHL draft in Texas would have been a great time for Dallas to step up and make themselves cup contenders, the plain fact is that they have failed to do so yet again.

Next: Dallas Stars Deserve To Miss 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs

Reality bites and sometimes knowing what has gone wrong doesn’t help, either. As for closure, it seems like the wound will stay open until the very last possible moment, and even then, we can be sure that the Stars organization will be making some severe changes once their hockey year comes to an abrupt halt.

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