Dallas Stars Show Familiar Response To Adversity Against Sharks

By Josh Clark | Apr 4, 2018

SAN JOSE, CA - APRIL 3: Julius Honka /

The regular season doesn’t carry any weight for the Dallas Stars anymore. But they showed in last night’s win over San Jose that they still have a lot of energy left to give. The team beat a lot of odds and showed their resilience along the way.

In four days, the Dallas Stars will be back in Dallas and preparing to pack up their things for another cruel, extended summer. That’s both frustrating and confusing.

They were mathematically eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoff race this past Sunday evening. The elimination came just four weeks after the Stars beat St. Louis and held sole control of third place in the Central Division. Oh, how the times have changed.

Through the first 60 games of the regular season, the Dallas Stars looked like a good team. Not just a good team, but even showed flashes of being a great team. Their offense was scoring at a consistent rate (though the number of contributors wasn’t incredibly extensive), their defense was a top-five unit, and the goaltending duo of Ben Bishop and Kari Lehtonen was buying the team a chance to win in every game.

One of their biggest strengths was their resilience. The team knew how to play a 60-minute game, claw back in tough situations, and scrap out a win against event the best teams in the league. They simply had all the makings of a good team.

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But then, the wheels fell off the bus. And when they fell off, they dropped into a canyon and burst into flames. That’s how bad it was.

The Stars flopped through the month of March, posting a 4-8-4 record which included an 0-6-2 stretch. They dropped from owning a playoff spot with a reasonable cushion to being outside the picture entirely. And though they tried to salvage their hopes with two wins in the final three games of the month, it was too little, too late.

Through their losses, the Stars’ problems were clearly defined. A lack of depth scoring, an injured starting goaltender, lacking effort on special teams. The list goes on and on. But one of their big struggles was playing resilient and relentless hockey. The Stars struggled with playing three full periods with the same level of intensity and turning games around in their favor.

Dallas entered the month of April with three games left on their schedule and needed something positive to build on. But nothing seemed to be going their way.

That all changed on Tuesday night in San Jose. The Dallas Stars started the game against the Sharks with no sort of life or effort whatsoever. San Jose pounced, scoring two early goals in the first period and even knocking Kari Lehtonen out of the game with a shot that hit him up high.

The Stars were outshot 18-5 in the first period and looked like a team that had lost all hope. They were relying on third string goaltender Mike McKenna through the final 40 minutes and needed at least two goals just to salvage a point.

But they did much more than that. Dallas bounced back in a big way, scoring four unanswered goals through the final 21 minutes of the game. That included a hat trick from Jamie Benn and a beautiful tally from Gemel Smith. McKenna stopped all 17 shots he faced, the Stars gave up one shot through the third period, and Dallas rallied back from a tight spot against a team that needed two points.

That’s resilience. That is something that we haven’t seen the Dallas Stars do in a while. They fought their way back into a game after a slow start and beat the odds in a game that didn’t really mean anything in regards to their standing.

It cannot be understated how encouraging it is to see the team do that because it gives hope. Not just hope for the rest of the season, but for the future as well. This team still has a lot of firepower, character, and confidence. They lost it at the wrong time this season, but it’s still there as we saw in the win over San Jose.

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Don’t forget that as the final few days and games of the season pass on. This resilience helps motivate the team and something to rally around. That’s exactly what they need at this point in the year.