The 2019 NHL Trade Deadline season was a busy one for the Dallas Stars as they added players to try and round out their roster. But with the arrival of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, it looks as though their deadline additions will be able to help in another way.
It’s been almost 35 full months since the Dallas Stars last competed in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. In less than 12 hours, however, they will break that drought.
On Wednesday night, the Stars will kick off 2019 postseason play with game one of their opening round series. They will square up with the Nashville Predators, a team that just secured its second consecutive Central division title on Saturday night.
The series is lining up to be intensely competitive and could very well go the distance of seven games. The regular season series provided back-and-forth action, plenty of bad blood, and left the door open for a potential rivalry to bud between two southern Central teams. This playoff series should simply add to that.
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Perhaps the most intriguing part about this series is how balanced the two teams are in terms of advantages. For instance, the Predators seem to own a slight advantage in terms of offensive pressure and scoring capabilities, while the Stars own the upper hand in the crease. On defense, the two teams seem pretty much deadlocked.
But while the two clubs are pretty even in most statistical categories, there is one underlying factor where the Predators seem to hold a heavy advantage. That’s postseason experience.
This will be the Predators’ fifth consecutive trip to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. They’ve been a part of every Stanley Cup Playoffs since 2015 and have an appearance in the 2017 Stanley Cup Final, a President’s Trophy in 2018, and the last two Central division regular season titles to show for it. In other words, they are one of the most experienced clubs in this year’s postseason race.
“They’re a good team,” Stars goaltender Ben Bishop said about the Predators. “Obviously, they’re a good team that has the experience. We have to do our homework and get ready for them. Obviously, it’s a fun place to play. So, just get ready and bring ’em on.”
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When the 2018-19 season began, one of the Stars’ biggest weaknesses was the lack of significant playoff experience on their roster. That wasn’t an immediate need, though. Instead, the primary focus at the beginning of the year was simply getting back into the playoffs after missing the mark in each of the previous two years.
Back in 2016, the Dallas Stars were the best team in the Western Conference during the regular season. They posted 50 wins and 109 points and secured the top seed in the West going into the playoffs. And though they advanced to the second round, they fell to the St. Louis Blues in a deciding game seven.
Just six of their starters (seven if you count and injured Tyler Seguin) in that game are still currently on the roster going into this year’s postseason. That’s a sizable gap.
Part of that immense turnaround had to do with a youth movement. Over the past few years, names like Jason Dickinson, Roope Hintz, Esa Lindell, and Miro Heiskanen have worked their way into the starting lineup and made a household name for themselves on the Dallas roster.
While this movement provides promise for the Stars’ future, it can also become a bit of a hindrance when the team qualifies for the postseason. But, as mentioned above, the focus wasn’t on an inexperienced roster when the 2018-19 season; instead, it was simply on qualifying for the postseason.
Gone Puck Wild
By mid-January, the likelihood of the Dallas Stars making the playoffs hadn’t changed much. In fact, their odds still hovered around 50 percent.
And with that knowledge, general manager Jim Nill got an early jump on the trade deadline season. He started by dealing Devin Shore to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for Andrew Cogliano in an attempt to add some much-needed speed to the Dallas offense. Two weeks later, he traded a fourth-round pick to the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for defenseman Jamie Oleksiak.
By the time the deadline rolled around in late February, the Stars’ odds of making the playoffs hadn’t shifted considerably in either direction. There were still plenty of questions about their offense and their ability to close out the season on a strong note. As a result, Nill made two more trades, acquiring defenseman Ben Lovejoy from the New Jersey Devils and forward Mats Zuccarello from the New York Rangers.
And strangely enough, those additions also didn’t severely boost or drop the Stars’ playoff odds. Zuccarello only played two games over the final month of the regular season and spent the rest of the time recovering from a broken arm. And while Lovejoy was a strong contributor on the penalty kill, he simply helped an already-solid Dallas blue line maintain its dominance.
But after a 9-4-2 showing in the month of March, the Dallas Stars secured their spot in the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs on April 2. The Stars clinched the top wild card spot and will now face the Nashville Predators in round one.
And now the talk must be had about postseason experience.
"“Playoffs are a different story and we need to be ready. I don’t know how many [players] in here have actually played in the playoffs because it’s been a long time for them. So, hopefully they are going to enjoy it and are going to be ready.” – Roman Polak on the Stars’ experience"
The thing about the Stanley Cup Playoffs is that they are an entirely different animal than the regular season.
“It’s a whole new season,” Tyler Seguin said on Saturday night. “The emotions are higher, the hits are harder, and the goals have bigger celebrations. It’s the best time of the year.”
Regular season games often carry a similar intensity from game 1 to game 82. But when postseason contests come into play, every game begins to mean more. The emotions are ramped up and the action is exhilarating. The fans are louder and more passionate. Everything is kicked up a notch.
That can sometimes come as a shock factor for NHL players that have never experienced the playoffs. Just ask the 2013-14 Dallas Stars. The majority of their lineup that season was young and inexperienced and had little to no history in the playoffs. As a result, the Stars went 0-3 on the road against the Anaheim Ducks and dropped in six games in the series.
Pucks and Pitchforks
This year, the Stars could have been in a similar position had the playoffs begun in early January. Their lineup through the opening half of the year largely consisted of younger players with no NHL playoff games under their belt.
But in Nill’s deadline transactions, he managed to not only better his attack, but also to add significant playoff experience.
Start with Andrew Cogliano. The forward has been to the last six Stanley Cup Playoffs, all with the Anaheim Ducks. Those six trips have resulted in 64 postseason contests within the Western Conference and plenty of experience in a gritty conference race.
Jamie Oleksiak never played in the playoffs in his first run with the Dallas Stars, but started in 12 games with the Penguins during their run through the 2018 postseason.
Ben Lovejoy owns an extensive history in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, skating in seven different postseason slates with three different clubs (Pittsburgh, Anaheim, and New Jersey). That adds up to 63 total games and a Stanley Cup title with the Penguins in 2016.
And finally, Mats Zuccarello was a regular in the postseason throughout the early part of his career. In eight full seasons with the Rangers, he qualified for the postseason during six of them and racked up 60 playoff starts and a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2014.
When you add those four acquisitions together, it comes out to 199 playoff games of experience injected into the Dallas Stars lineup. That’s a substantial number and is a factor that cannot be overlooked. While the Stars’ franchise may not have a ton of recent practice in the postseason, their deadline additions do.
So while players like Dickinson, Hintz, Lindell, Heiskanen, and Taylor Fedun don’t have any playoff experience to speak of, the Stars now have some weathered playoff veterans in the locker room.
Ben Bishop served as a brick wall for the Tampa Bay Lightning during their run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2015. Roman Polak played in a Stanley Cup Final with the San Jose Sharks in 2016. Jason Spezza has played in 69 playoff games during his career and could be a valuable asset, regardless of whether he’s in the lineup in game one or not. Don’t forget that the playoffs are just as much of a mental burden as they are a physical one. It’s always helpful to have veterans in the locker room that can help lead the team through postseason tests.
The Dallas Stars became a better team at the 2019 NHL Trade Deadline. They rounded out their offense and added size and a veteran voice to a relatively small and young defensive group.
But on top of that, they added playoff-hardened assets that can help the team through all of the trials and tribulations that the postseason brings with it.
That cannot be highlighted enough as they enter game one on Wednesday night.