Dallas Stars: Assessing Their Impressive Turnaround In 2018-19 Season
By Josh Clark
The Dallas Stars turned in one of their most successful campaigns of the past decade in 2018-19. But just a few short months ago, they seemed destined for destruction. When did the turnaround occur? Well, it all had to do with January 2019.
It’s been two weeks since the Dallas Stars packed up their lockers, said their parting remarks to the media, and departed from the rink for the 2019 summer. And while that annual occurrence usually signals the need for extensive offseason and free agency talk, I want to take a different route for today.
Instead of looking ahead, let’s turn back for a moment and assess the path that the 2018-19 Stars carved.
I moved back home from college on May 12. Once arriving home and unpacking all of my stuff, my first order of business was to clean out my closet and all of my drawers. I hadn’t done a spring cleaning session in a few years and needed to try and get my life back in order (to an extent, at least).
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As I was cleaning out the drawer where I stash all of my Dallas Stars notes (I found some from the 2014-15 season), I came across a game notes packet from the Stars-Blues game on Jan. 12, 2019. And wow, did that ever bring back some strong feelings of uncertainty and doubt.
If you don’t remember the game, here’s a quick refresher: the Stars dropped a 3-1 loss to the Blues, one of the worst teams in the NHL at the time. Erik Condra scored the lone goal for Dallas in the contest. The loss was their second in a row after dropping a disappointing 2-1 finish to the Philadelphia Flyers two nights prior and helped start a four-game homestand on a disappointing note.
If you had predicted at that point that the Stars would not only qualify for the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, but win a first-round series against the Nashville Predators and force a Game 7 against the St. Louis Blues (who just as shockingly are now in the Stanley Cup Final), the majority of the hockey world likely would have deemed you uninformed and uneducated in NHL lore.
And yet, here we are four months later talking about one of the Stars’ most successful campaigns of the past decade. That’s due to a handful of different reasons, all of which can be linked back to the first month of the year.
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January 2019 was an incredibly revealing period of time for the Dallas Stars organization.
Within that 31-day frame, the Stars both hit their lowest point of the 2018-19 season and found a way to turn their campaign around entirely. They saw both how far they could fall when nothing worked in their favor and how high they could soar when everything clicked at the same time.
It all began on Jan. 2 when the Stars defeated the New Jersey Devils 5-4 to pick up their first win of the 2019 season. The win was the third in their past four contests and helped push Dallas to 21-16-4 on the year. Miro Heiskanen was once again electric, notching the second multi-goal game of his career, while Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin (2) combined for three goals just five days after being called out by CEO Jim Lites for their “lacking” production.
That win turned into another victory two nights later in overtime against the Washington Capitals to push the Stars to six games above .500.
But then came yet another untimely skid. Following their strong push to end 2018 and kick off 2019, the Stars proceeded to drop five of their next six games. Mixed into that slump were losses to the Philadelphia Flyers, St. Louis Blues, and Los Angeles Kings, three teams that all sat in the bottom-five of the NHL standings when they defeated Dallas.
As the Dallas Stars sank to 23-21-4 on the season and saw their playoff hopes dip near 50 percent, everything seemed to be unraveling at the seams. Unlike in the 2017-18 season where everything was on track until the final month of the season, the Stars were in a corner just past the midway point of the year.
Jim Montgomery told the media about his frustration with being unable to change the culture of mediocrity within the organization. The offense had scored just three goals over a four-game span and continued to hurt the team’s chances. Finally, the Stars had a date with the best team in the Central division, being the Winnipeg Jets, to close out their homestand before taking 10 days off from action. Things looked bleak.
But, just as Harvey Dent said in The Dark Knight, “The night is darkest just before the dawn.”
Starting on January 19, the Dallas Stars turned a corner and began one of the most impressive turnarounds in recent memory. After defeating the Jets 4-2 on home ice to end a four-game skid and give a small glimpse of how dangerous they could be, Dallas hit the gas after the All-Star Break.
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Including the win against Winnipeg, the Stars finished the season on a 20-11-3 streak. That stretch included both a five-game and four-game winning streak, and only one regulation losing streak that lasted more than two games.
They went 10-5-2 on the road to close the season after starting the year with the worst road record among realistic playoff contenders at 9-13-2. On top of that, they kept their home record rolling at a dominant pace, going 10-6-1 at the American Airlines Center to close out the season at 24-14-3 on home ice.
Another crazy part of their comeback was that, at the time of the game against the Blues on Jan. 12, the Dallas offense was averaging 2.66 goals per game. That means that even after trading for Andrew Cogliano and Mats Zuccarello (although he missed most of the remaining regular season games) in an attempt to beef up the offensive depth and scoring, the Stars’ average still dropped 0.11 goals per game to 2.55.
So, a team that was already lacking in offense became even more plagued in the scoring department and still somehow made it to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. How about that?
That’s primarily due to the fact that the defense found a way to be better than it already had been. On Jan. 12, the Stars were averaging 2.64 goals against per game. By the end of the regular season, they had cut that by 0.2 to finish with the second-lowest goals against average in the NHL at 2.44.
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The power play percentage dropped from 21.7 percent to 21.0 percent, while the penalty killing went from 83.1 percent to 82.8 percent. Minor changes, but still important to comprehend when looking at the grand scheme of things. The fact that both special teams units dropped in production and the team still surged into the postseason is just another pat on the back.
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And even after starting the year on a strong note, Ben Bishop went from a .923 save percentage on Jan. 12 to a .934 at the end of the season and dropped his GAA from 2.36 to 1.98. He also set the franchise record for longest consecutive shutout streak.
That performance earned him a spot as a finalist in the Vezina Trophy race and earned him the supreme title of the “Stars’ backbone.”
The Dallas Stars went from 4-5-1 (4-6-1 if you count the loss to St. Louis) against the Central division to 14-10-2 by the end of the season.
After taking a nosedive in March 2018 and posting a record of 4-8-4 that capsized their playoff hopes, the Stars bounced back in the most important month of the season in 2019 with a 9-4-2 mark.
As I continued to scan the list, it was crazy to see just how drastic changes came about in the Stars’ production. And yet, they took a sizable step that the players, team, and organization as a whole all desperately needed. Now, the foundation seems to be present to build into a bright future.
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The Stars have the month of January to thank for that. It’s a month that has been unkind to them in years past (they are a combined 24-29-10 in the first month of the year since 2014). This time around, however, Dallas used it as a stage to put on a complete 180° and save their season.
Sometimes, all it takes is a little midseason skid to completely revamp a franchise’s hopes.