Dallas Stars: Season Series Against Predators Offers Intriguing Potential
The opening round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs will throw the Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators into the ring. And after a thrilling five-game series played between the two in the 2018-19 regular season, this first round matchup boasts impressive potential.
The Monday following the last weekend of the NHL regular season has been a somber one for the Dallas Stars in the recent past. In each of the past two seasons, the Stars hosted their exit interview day on this Monday and prepared for a long offseason filled with necessary and imminent change.
Each Monday followed up another season of missing the mark and falling short of the ultimate goal, leaving plenty of frustration and confusion.
But on this Monday in April 2019, the Stars aren’t hosting their annual exit interview day. The franchise doesn’t look like a mess from top-to-bottom and the team didn’t miss their mark using an epic March collapse or by falling flat early in the year and being unable to catch up.
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Instead, the Dallas Stars are gearing up for game one of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs on Wednesday night. After taking Sunday off following a 3-0 win over the Minnesota Wild the night before, Dallas returned to the ice for practice on Monday. And following another practice on Tuesday at noon, the team will board a plane and head for Nashville.
That’s where they will meet up with the Nashville Predators, a team fresh off of securing its second consecutive Central division title on Saturday night.
After a bit of vaulting in the top three spots of the Central through the final week of the regular season, the Predators emerged atop the division standings and secured home ice advantage in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
And so, the Stars and Predators will duke it out in the first round of the postseason. That’s a big opening round matchup not only for the Stars and Predators, but for the division and the NHL as a whole.
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At times like this, it can be both intriguing and helpful to look to the immediate past when trying to figure out where the series could potentially go. And when you take a glance at where the Stars and Predators are coming from, it’s easy to see a world of potential.
The Stars and Predators are no strangers to each other. The two teams were pitted against each other in a five-game series during the 2018-19 regular season and traded blows in what is quickly becoming one of the fiercest rivalries in the Central division.
And for much of the series, the two teams traded the winning role.
The series began in early November with the Predators securing a 5-4 overtime win. That contest came just two days after the Stars lost defenseman John Klingberg to a broken hand and forced the Stars to play without four of their usual top six defenders on the blue line.
Immediately after the NHL Holiday Break wrapped up, the Stars went to Nashville and picked up a gritty 2-0 win thanks to a 49-save shutout from Anton Khudobin.
February was a busy month for Dallas and Nashville as the teams met up three times in a span of 18 days. The Stars won the first contest of the month with a 3-1 comeback victory at Bridgestone Arena thanks to another heroic effort by Khudobin, but lost six days later in a 3-2 contest that required overtime. The season series ended with a 5-3 victory by the Predators at the American Airlines Center.
Dallas went 2-1-2. Nashville went 3-2-0. Both teams scored 14 goals. The away team dominated for the majority of the series. The five-game set consisted of 72 combined penalty minutes between the two teams and a handful of scrums and fights.
Different players took the spotlight with each passing game, while different facets of each team’s overall execution played a determining role in them winning or losing the contest.
All in all, the five-game series was thrilling. There was back-and-forth action, high-scoring offensive assaults, low-scoring defensive grinds, and plenty of intense emotion to go around.
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Pucks and Pitchforks
As the pendulum swung back and forth, the NHL raised the stakes by naming the Dallas Stars as the hosts of the 2020 Winter Classic and selecting the Nashville Predators as their opponent. It’s the first outdoor game in franchise history for both clubs and offers a big opportunity for both to continue building their brand in a rivalry game.
This playoff series should serve as another immensely entertaining step in getting to the big stage on New Year’s Day.
The season series says a lot about the relationship between the Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators. The history between the two since divisional realignment in the summer of 2013 says even more. These two teams take pride in not liking each other. Throughout the struggle for power within the division, the two have always been pitted against each other in big games.
It seems crazy that this will be the first time that the Stars and Predators meet in the postseason. At the same time, however, it should make the series all the more aggressive.
Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, and Alexander Radulov against Ryan Johansen, Viktor Arvidsson, and Filip Forsberg. John Klingberg, Esa Lindell, and Miro Heiskanen against P.K. Subban, Roman Josi, and Ryan Ellis. Pekka Rinne against Ben Bishop (and Anton Khudobin).
Two southern hockey teams with a hunger for results. One is on its fifth consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup Playoffs while the other is back in the dance for the first time since 2016. One fell two wins short of its first-ever Stanley Cup in 2017 while the other is trying to win its second Cup in franchise history and first in 20 years.
“It’s a whole new season. The emotions are higher, the hits are harder, and the goals have bigger celebrations. It’s the best time of the year.” – Tyler Seguin on the Stanley Cup Playoffs
The Stars and Predators both have something to prove in this series. For the Stars, it’s a chance to show that a season filled with adversity only served as fuel towards their ultimate goal. For the Predators, it’s a chance to show that though they didn’t finish this season on as dominant of a note as they did last year (when they won the President’s Trophy), they are still a capable and experienced club in the playoffs that can make a run.
The five-game regular season series set the table for what should be a tightly-contested and emotional first round slate.
Next. All Set: Stars-Predators Schedule, Rundown For Round One. dark
The Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators will throw down to start off the journey to the 2019 Stanley Cup Final. Though it may not be the opening round series that you wanted, it’s the opening round series that the entire NHL needed.