Dallas Stars Enter 2019 NHL All-Star Break In Encouraging Position

The All-Star Break began on Thursday morning for all 31 teams in the NHL. And, even after four days of inactivity, the Dallas Stars find themselves heading into the break on a positive note.

Some sports teams seem to have all of the luck on their side. Whether they win their division every season due to their opponents consistently struggling, always seem to hit the lucky shot or score the lucky goal or touchdown in crunch time, or attract top free agents every offseason, it’s a common thread that some sports teams just have an “it” factor that others can only dream of.

The Dallas Stars don’t necessarily have “it.” As a result, there hasn’t been much luck on their side in the recent past.

In game six of round one of the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Stars saw their two-goal lead against the Anaheim Ducks evaporate in the final three minutes of the game. Dallas was then eliminated from the postseason a few minutes into overtime. After pulling out a win in game six against the Blues in the 2016 postseason, the Stars returned home for a deciding game seven and were humiliated and cut short of reaching the Western Conference Final. A month before the 2016-17 season, 2013 Valeri Nichushkin left the team for the KHL.

The Martin Hanzal signing hasn’t and probably never will pan out (in regards to term and salary), Miro Heiskanen and Radek Faksa are the only Dallas first round picks from the past decade that consistently start, and the Stars’ goaltending is just now getting to a strong level after years of mediocrity. Don’t forget about the 0-6-2 losing skid that plagued the Stars in March 2018 and removed them from the postseason conversation for the eighth time in the past ten years.

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So no, the Dallas Stars aren’t one of the NHL’s luckier teams. But, that doesn’t mean that things always go against them.

When the Stars picked up a critical win on Saturday night against the Winnipeg Jets, they moved ahead to 24-21-4 on the season with 52 points. They also went into hibernation mode as they kicked off a 10-day break. With the team’s five-day CBA break meshing with the four-day NHL All-Star Break, it’s a time for the team to recharge and try to establish Saturday’s dominant performance as their new norm.

But it also provided a chance to watch the teams around them in the standings. Though the All-Star Break offers a league-wide stoppage, the CBA breaks are scheduled differently for each team. As a result, the Dallas Stars had a chance to step back and observe how the teams around them fared in a tight Western Conference playoff race. That can be both enticing and terrifying at the same time, especially around this time of the regular season.

Wednesday night brought the Stars’ situation to a climax. They sat in the first wild card spot in the west, but each of the five teams sitting directly above and below them in the standings had a scheduled game that could potentially shake up the rankings.

But as the NHL shifted into neutral mode with the beginning of the All-Star Break on Thursday morning, a quick glance at the standing shows that the Dallas Stars have not moved. Their best-case scenario ended up happening on Wednesday night, leaving them untouched by the other challengers.

As a result, the Stars will enter the All-Star Weekend in a playoff spot. Here’s how it looks:

1. Dallas Stars 49 GP 52 PTS

2. Colorado Avalanche 50 GP 52 PTS

3. Vancouver Canucks 51 GP 52 PTS

4. Anaheim Ducks 51 GP 51 PTS

5. Arizona Ducks 50 GP 50 PTS

In addition, the Stars sit three points back of the Minnesota Wild for third place in the Central with one game in hand. The Wild defeated the Avalanche last night, boosting their record to 26-21-3 with 55 points through 50 games played.

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Now, it’s still a tight race. On top of that, there are 31-33 games for each team left to play. There will be surges and droughts. Some teams will fall out of the playoff race entirely, others will stay competitive until the end, and some will jump ahead of the pack and stay there. Which team falls into which category is anyone’s guess at this point with ten weeks to go in the regular season.

But at the moment, the Dallas Stars are in an encouraging spot. They were away from the ice for four consecutive days and managed to not fall out of a playoff spot that they barely held control of going into their break. As a result, they now have at least one game in hand on each of the teams around them in the standings. And when they get back to action on Jan. 30 against the Buffalo Sabres, the teams around them will be enduring their own breaks. It’s a give-and-take scenario that the Stars will now have a chance to capitalize on.

The playoff race will only get tighter for the Western Conference as the season rolls along, so it’s important for the Stars to take advantage of every opportunity. They now have one awaiting them on the outset of their break. That all starts with finding consistency and building on a winning effort from last weekend.

“We’re always trying to get better,” Stars coach Jim Montgomery said back on Jan. 12. “But, it’s a tough balance. You look in the standings and we’re in an okay position, but nobody’s happy with a lot of parts of our game. So anyways, we’re trying to get people in the right frame of mind to play to their strengths which will allow us to address some of those deficiencies that we see.”

This is the time of the NHL regular season when the standings begin to become an important factor. While teams can bounce back from losing skids early in the year, they can prove to be fatal in the final two months of the season. As a result, every point matters. And with the way the schedule plays out, the Stars will still be in a playoff spot come Wednesday.

“I think we look at the standings fairly often,” Montgomery added. “It’s nicer to look at after a win than it is after a loss; that’s just the way it is. But, I’m always more concerned with how our team is playing and how we’re growing. The frustrating part sometimes is you don’t see enough growth and then you do see growth and you get excited about how good we could be. Trying to get to that level where we start to see what we are on a daily basis is when we’re not going to have to worry about looking at the standings. We’re just going to know where we should be and we’ll be there.”

The Dallas Stars and the other 30 NHL teams are off for the next four days. There’s no hockey action (except for the All-Star Game in San Jose) to speak of and no shuffling in the standings. But come next Wednesday, it’s an opportunity for the Stars to shift back into high gear and build on their current spot.

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The Stars took a long break and were still able to hold onto a playoff spot. That brings a certain sense of encouragement with it. But, that’s only part of the battle. The real battle is what they do with the part that they control.

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