Dallas Stars: Jamie Benn Goes Out With Bang, Earns First Star Of Week
By Josh Clark
The last week of the NHL regular season was all about the Dallas Stars captain. Jamie Benn earned First Star of the Week honors from the league. But sadly, his surge was just a little late.
The Dallas Stars looked like a good hockey team for the majority of the final week of the season. It’s too bad that it came after six weeks of a heavy struggle.
After posting an 0-6-2 skid throughout the month of March, the Stars went from a likely playoff team to a team on the outside of the picture. From there, they simply didn’t have the fire or ability to climb back into the race. And because of that, they are now heading home for another long offseason.
But that final week was still somewhat encouraging, right?
On Monday afternoon as Stars players cleaned out their lockers, the NHL announced that Jamie Benn had been named the First Star of the Week. He was accompanied by Roberto Luongo and Claude Giroux to round out the top three. The Three Stars of the Week are awarded during each week of the regular season based on the top three players of that week ranked by their performances.
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The Dallas Stars captain was the second Star of the season to crack the top three, with only Radek Faksa joining him. Faksa earned it on the week of December 4 after scoring five goals (including a hat trick) and tallying two assists along with a +7 rating in a four-game span. Benn is the first Star to earn first star (that’s not confusing at all) honors in a while. In fact, the last Star to win this honor was Jamie Benn on the week of Nov. 30, 2015.
And this time around, Benn certainly earned it. In the final week of the season, he turned his “beast mode” switch back on. The captain scored seven goals and tallied an assist in the final three games of the season, all coming on the road. He notched a hat trick against San Jose on Tuesday, secured a two-point night (1G, 1A) against Anaheim, and closed the year out with a hat trick in Los Angeles.
Seven goals in three games is no small feat. Neither is two hat tricks in one week. But it just goes to show that Jamie Benn can still be a dominant player.
After months of people questioning whether the “old Captain” was going to show up down the stretch, Benn proved once again to be up to the task.
It is disappointing to say the least that this hot streak waited until the end of the year to pop up. But at least it did, because it shows that this team still has a fiery leader that will do whatever it takes to get the job done. If there’s any sort of encouragement, that’s it.
Next: Nill Calling For Assessment As Stars' Year Ends
The regular season is over for the Dallas Stars and they are missing playoff hockey yet again. That’s disappointing in and of itself, but at least they have a captain that can still turn up the heat.
It’s the little victories that count.