Dallas Stars Top 25 Games Of 2017-18 Season: 20-16
The Dallas Stars didn’t qualify for the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs. But that doesn’t mean their 2017-18 season wasn’t interesting and entertaining. Here is a countdown of the top 25 best games from this past season.
There’s nothing quite like watching a Dallas Stars game.
Whether you are on your couch watching them on TV or in the seats at the American Airlines Center, it’s a unique experience. Part of that has to do with the non-traditional vibe that the team carries in the hockey world.
But a big part of it has to do with the team itself. For the past few years, it’s been a gamble when trying to decipher what team you’re getting.
Maybe you get the 2013-14 Stars who were cautiously optimistic and somehow found a way to make things work? Then there was the 2014-15 Stars that looked good on paper but really struggled to make ends meet on the ice. Or perhaps you get the 2015-16 Stars who were fast, relentless, and oh so much fun to watch? But then again, you might get the eye-sore that was the 2016-17 Stars who couldn’t seem to do anything right.
Dallas Stars
It’s been an eventful rollercoaster ride over the past few seasons.
But we cannot forget about the most recent corkscrew in the adventure: the 2017-18 regular season.
Throughout this past season, the Dallas Stars put together a show that won’t soon be forgotten. It started out slow in the beginning, then ramped up to a more impressive speed, but ended by crashing and burning in a horrific fashion.
After putting together a dominant stretch from late November to late February, Dallas all of a sudden flipped into reverse. They undid all of their prior progress and couldn’t seem to do one thing correctly in the month of March.
They ended up missing the playoffs for the second year in a row. This shortcoming arrived with more frustration as the Stars will now endure another offseason of change.
But it wasn’t all bad. In fact, there were plenty of bright and exciting moments from the 2017-18 season. A record of 42-32-8 has to come with at least a decent number of good times, especially during the team’s 25th anniversary season.
Here at Blackout Dallas, we found 25 games (funny how that works) that were just a little (or lot) more special than the rest. And with that, we thought it would be a good idea to rank them. This ranking gives Dallas Stars fans the opportunity to walk down memory lane and focus on the brighter parts of this past season.
We will post five games at a time over the next week or two until we get to no. 1. With each game, we will provide a video or highlight (if applicable) of just what made the game so special. We will also put up a summary of the game to help jog your memory.
Last week, we put up the no. 25-21 slideshow of the Top 25 list. Today, we are rolling out no. 20-16.
Without further ado, let’s step back in time to the good days of Dallas Stars hockey. Here are games 20-16 of the Top 25 Games of the 2017-18 Season.
20. Minnesota Wild @ Dallas Stars, Feb. 3, 2018
To get this next segment started, let’s take it back to Feb. 3, which happened to take Stars fans back to the 1990’s.
Retro Night was one of the Stars’ promotional nights at the AAC during the 2017-18 season. And it just happened to be a smashing success.
Part of that was due to the premise behind the promotion. The Dallas Stars offered food and drinks at 1990’s prices, played an extensive playlist from the 90’s, and included graphics and animations from 20 years ago in their in-arena presentation. And to top it all off, the Stars wore throwback uniforms for warmups from their debut season in Dallas in 1993.
More from Editorials
- Dallas Stars hockey is about to be the main attraction in Dallas this year
- Age Before Beauty: The impact of Benn’s new role on his Dallas legacy
- Dallas Stars hockey is the light at the end of the tunnel
- Dallas Stars coverage is lacking and it’s very concerning to be honest
- Sit back, relax and watch Jim Nill and the Dallas Stars draft scouts cook
The Stars welcomed in the Minnesota Wild for Retro Night (which fit the theme perfectly). It just happened to be a critical Central Division matchup in regards to the standings. With the midseason push raging on, Dallas sat in the first wild card spot. But two points back sat a Wild team looking to capitalize and move ahead.
On top of that, the Stars were already 0-1-0 against Minnesota in the season after suffering a 4-2 loss in December.
Two precious points were on the line with both teams desperately needing the boost. But only one team seemed to want them once the puck dropped. That team was the Dallas Stars.
Dallas ended up winning it 6-1 behind a stellar offensive showing along with solid goaltending from Kari Lehtonen. But it was HOW they did it that made the win so impressive.
The Stars and Wild went scoreless through the first period, with neither team finding a way to break through. It wasn’t until Mattias Janmark scored with 11:02 to go in the second period that the scoreboard changed. And that’s when the Dallas offense hit the turbo button.
Behind goals from Stephen Johns, Jamie Benn, and Tyler Seguin all within 5:08 of Janmark’s goal, Dallas all of a sudden owned a 4-0 lead. And after Jason Zucker scored early in the third period to get Minnesota on the board, Alexander Radulov and Dan Hamhuis tacked on goals of their own to secure a 6-1 final.
The Stars were 2/2 on the power play and penalty kill, put 38 shots on net (including an incredible 20 in the second period), and won 67 percent of the face-offs. They were the better team in every regard and put on an offensive onslaught that the Wild had no answers for.
Lehtonen earned his second win in a row in impressive fashion, stopping 30 of 31 and earning the second star of the game. He made some key saves early to keep the Wild at bay and bought the Stars a chance to build a lead, which they eventually grabbed.
It was the second win in a five-game win streak that Dallas built to start off the month of February.
What a way to ring in the good old days.
19. New York Islanders @ Dallas Stars, Nov. 10, 2017
The first month of the regular season wasn’t an ideal one for the Dallas Stars. From new players trying to develop comfort zones to the entire team having to adapt to a new and vastly different coaching style, it was definitely a challenge.
Going into November 10, the Stars were still sitting in mediocrity. And while this stretch did continue for another two weeks or so, the night of the tenth brought about an incredibly high point.
Dallas, who sat at an 8-7-0 mark at the time, welcomed in a New York Islanders team that had gotten off to a decent start (8-5-2). The Stars needed a solid result on home ice before heading out on a three-game road trip (where they had struggled through the first month).
And they definitely got it. Dallas blasted the Islanders 5-0 on home ice to keep their record floating above .500.
How they did it was the impressive part. The Stars dominated all three zones for the entire game and it showed both on the scoreboard and stat sheet. And on top of all of that, they had a significantly different look on offense… and it worked.
John Klingberg started the scoring off just 1:32 into the first period after setting up a nice opportunity with Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin. Gemel Smith followed him up a few minutes later with his first goal of the season and celebrated in ecstatic fashion (see above picture). Esa Lindell also scored with less than three minutes to go to close out a three-point period for Klingberg and secure a 3-0 lead.
The second period looked just as good, with Mattias Janmark scoring shorthanded and Jason Spezza picking up his long-awaited first goal of the season on the power play to make it 5-0.
And to wrap things up, Ben Bishop picked up his first shutout in Victory Green. Sure, the Stars only gave up 14 shots in the entire game, but Bishop stopped all of them.
It’s fun to win on home ice. But it’s even more fun to dominate and see players reach multiple different “firsts.” That just so happened on Nov. 10 and that’s why this game rings in at no. 19.
18. Chicago Blackhawks @ Dallas Stars, Dec. 2, 2017
You HAD to know that another Chicago Blackhawks game would be coming in the Top 25 soon enough. After the first one debuted at no. 25, we’re back with more.
This game just happened to come two days after that game at no. 25. It was the second and final leg of a home-and-home series between the Stars and Hawks in late November/early December. The two teams met up in Dallas two days after Mattias Janmark scored the game-winning goal in Chicago to earn a 4-3 win for the Stars.
Live Feed class=inline-text id=inline-text-4
SenShot
This one took all of the excitement of the previous game a step further by going to a shootout. But still, Dallas pulled out an impressive 3-2 victory.
Things went tit-for-tat for most of the night, with both teams countering each other. Alexander Radulov scored early in the first on the power play, but Chicago responded less than three minutes later. In the second period, Radek Faksa notched a goal in his third consecutive game but was equaled out by Brandon Saad a few minutes after.
The game went to overtime at a 2-2 tie with Chicago holding a narrow 32-31 shot advantage. There were some good chances for both directions (including one for Nick Schmaltz that was cleverly played last-second by Ben Bishop), but no one broke through in overtime. And so, to make a weekend home game against a division rival even more exciting, the shootout came next.
That’s where the Dallas Stars put on a show. Radulov started things off with a slick move to give Dallas a 1-0 lead and was followed up by Tyler Seguin, who scored on a nasty backhand shot. Bishop stoned both Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane in the other end and responded by celebrating with some rather intense emotion.
It was everything you would want to see in a fierce divisional rivalry, including the two points in the end.
The win marked four in a row for the Stars and helped them get what turned into an impressive December off on the right foot. Dallas would pick up one more win to set a new season-high win streak following the game and put themselves back into the thick of playoff contention.
Rivalries are fun, and so are wins.
17. Dallas Stars @ Buffalo Sabres, Jan. 20, 2018
It’s been a while since the Sabres and Stars had a fierce rivalry. Ever since the 1999 Stanley Cup Final when Dallas claimed the championship over Buffalo, there hasn’t been a lot of bad blood, especially in recent years.
Part of that has to do with being in different conferences and only playing each other twice a year. But the other half has to do with the fact that Buffalo just hasn’t been very good in a LONG time. The Sabres have not qualified for the playoffs since being eliminated in the first round of the 2011 postseason.
Live Feed class=inline-text id=inline-text-4Editor In Leaf
In four of the past five seasons, the team has finished in dead last in the Atlantic Division. They also have not surpassed 81 points since 2012, including finishing multiple seasons in the 50’s.
So it hasn’t been a good time for the hockey fans in Buffalo. And somehow, it probably got a little worse after their game against the Stars on Jan. 20.
The Dallas Stars traveled to Buffalo to wrap up a four-game road trip that took place over a span of six days. It was a Saturday afternoon game and Dallas had just lost their previous game to Columbus on Thursday night.
Dallas burst out of the gate and never took their foot off the gas against a clearly struggling and just overall poor Buffalo team. By the time it was all said and done, the Stars had rung up seven goals for the second time in the 2017-18 season in a 7-1 routing.
Remi Elie started the game off with an early goal and was followed a few minutes later by a power play tally from Mattias Janmark.
The second period is where things really got out of hand, with the Stars getting goals from Janmark, Jamie Benn, Esa Lindell, and Radek Faksa. Sam Reinhart scored the lone goal on the power play for the Sabres, but it still sat at a 6-1 score after two. Tyler Pitlick scored the only goal in the third period on a deflection to increase the Stars’ lead to six goals, where it would sit for the rest of the game.
Kari Lehtonen was brilliant for the second time that week after picking up a win against Boston on Monday. He stopped 26 of the Sabres’ 27 shots to pick up another impressive win. Dillon Heatherington also got in his first career fight (we won’t talk about who “won”) in his second NHL appearance.
12 of the Stars’ 18 skaters tallied a point, with John Klingberg, Mattias Janmark, and Esa Lindell walking away with three-point nights.
Oh, and the Stars were able to get Buffalo fans booing before the game ended. That’s what an offensive explosion will do for you.
16. Philadelphia Flyers @ Dallas Stars, March 27, 2018
Yes, this game was basically meaningless. And yes, it may be a painful reminder of the dark times that the Dallas Stars faced in March 2018. But at least it was one of the few bright spots during the month.
Coming into this game against the Philadelphia Flyers, the Stars were at their lowest point of the year. The season was almost over, and somehow, Dallas wasn’t in the playoff picture anymore.
More from Blackout Dallas
- Dallas Stars Traverse City Tournament: Who had great performances?
- Grushnikov and Stankoven lead Dallas Stars to 6-3 win over Columbus
- Dallas Stars prospects look to wrap up tournament with a win
- Burn the tapes: Dallas Stars prospects lose 5-1 to Toronto Maple Leafs
- Dallas Stars look to continue success today against the Maple Leafs
That’s because from March 11-25, the Stars posted a horrific 0-6-2 record. They went winless on their season-long road trip of six games and came back home only to have their hopes dashed even further by Boston and Vancouver. As a result, the rest of the league passed Dallas up and bumped them from the playoff picture and, as it would come to fruition five days later, the playoff race altogether.
It was a dark time for the Stars. So much hope had been built up over the previous three months that it almost didn’t seem real. Instead, it just looked like a horrible nightmare.
But as they clung to their faint playoff hopes, they welcomed in the Flyers for their second-to-last home game of the year. It was evident from the lesser size of the crowd that the fans had taken the skid just as harshly as the team, but the Stars had to press on anyways if they wanted to keep their hopes alive.
The game started out on a solid note, though, as Radek Faksa scored on a backhand shot midway through the first period. It was quickly equaled out by Travis Konecny a few moments later.
Ivan Provorov picked up a lead for the Flyers early in the second, but Brett Ritchie was able to counter it with a power play goal midway through the second period.
Dallas survived a furious push by Philadelphia in the third period thanks to a masterful performance by Kari Lehtonen. The Flyers put 14 shots on net in the final frame as opposed to six by the Stars, but Lehtonen stopped each one of them to carry the game to overtime.
40 seconds into the extra period is when the play happened. Not only did it fake out the cameraman, but it also likely faked out most of the fans. John Klingberg delivered a pass from his own zone up to the blue line where Tyler Seguin and Alexander Radulov awaited a two-on-zero opportunity.
While the Flyers were stuck in a change, Seguin carefully caught the puck with the tip of his toes still on the blue line and brought it in before eventually dishing it to Radulov for the overtime winner. It was one of the slickest goals that Dallas scored all season and helped them break out of a losing plague in unbelievable fashion.
Next: Rumor Mill: Nichushkin Agrees On New Contract With Stars
That’s all we have for no. 20-16. Check back soon for the next edition of Top 25 Games of the Stars’ 2017-18 Season where we will reveal games 15-11. You can be assured that it will be another walk down memory lane that you won’t soon forget.
MORE READING: Stars’ Top 25 Games of 2017-18 Season: No. 25-21