Heika’s Take: Stars’ run comes to an end as Oilers clinch series in Game 5

There was a statement made Thursday night, but it was by the Edmonton Oilers.

With the Stars poised to show the resilience that has been a trademark all season in hopes of pushing their best-of-seven Western Conference Final to a sixth game, Edmonton instead played like a team bent on winning the Stanley Cup. The Oilers scored two goals in the first 7:09 of play, chased goalie Jake Oettinger from the game, and then powered home with a 6-3 victory to clinch the series in five games.

It was a powerful performance by an Oilers team that also sent the Stars packing last year. This is now three consecutive losses in the conference final for Dallas.

“It sucks. I mean, three years in a row now,” captain Jamie Benn. “You get that close and you come up short - it doesn’t matter who you’re playing. Obviously, not a good feeling.”

Stars coach Pete DeBoer decided to play rookie Mavrik Bourque for just the third time in the playoffs (and the first time in more than a month) and Bourque took a high-stick penalty 1:47 into the game. It took the red-hot Oilers power play just 44 seconds to score and get the all-important first goal of the game. Dallas surrendered the first goal in all five games in the series and in 15 of 18 games in the 2025 postseason. Dallas ranked third in the regular season in scoring first, doing it 46 times in 82 games, so the flip flop was inexplicable. The problem is it had a serious impact on the games.

“I thought we had a lot of opportunities this series to score some goals. Obviously not getting a lead, or the first goal, killed us,” forward Jason Robertson said. “I think that was kind of the theme.”

Edmonton compounded the first goal with another marker four minutes later. Former Stars forward Mattias Janmark took a pass entering the offensive zone with speed and slipped a puck past Oettinger to make it 2-0. DeBoer called his timeout, delivered an emotional speech at the bench, and told Oettinger to have a seat.

“Anytime you pull a goalie, the reasoning is always to try and spark your group, so that was the number one reason,” DeBoer said. “We had talked endlessly in this series about trying to play with a lead. And obviously we’re in a 2-0 hole right away. And you know what, I didn’t take that lightly and I didn’t blame it all on Jake. But the reality is, if you go back to last year’s playoffs, he’s lost six of seven games to Edmonton and we gave up two goals on two shots in an elimination game. It was partly to spark our team and wake them up and partly knowing that the status quo had not been working. And that’s a pretty big sample size.”

DeBoer inserted backup goalie Casey DeSmith, and the message was clear.

“Pretty much, `Wake up, start playing,’” Benn said. “We kind of left Jakey out to dry there early on. It’s pretty much the message.”

But the sloppy play continued and DeSmith yielded a goal to Jeff Skinner on a goal-mouth scramble at the 8:07 mark to make the score 3-0. There wasn’t much hope in the building, but Robertson made the score 3-1 later in the first period, and Roope Hintz made it 3-2 midway through the second period, and for a moment, everyone seemed to believe again.

“Belief was still there, for sure,” Mikko Rantanen said.

But just when the Stars seemed to be gaining momentum, the Oilers got a big play. A deflected puck pinballed into the neutral zone and Oilers superstar Connor McDavid took off with speed. He fought off the check of Hintz and slipped a puck past DeSmith for a 4-2 lead. Dallas made it 4-3 early in the third period on Robertson’s second goal of the game, but then Edmonton had a puck bank off of Stars defenseman Esa Lindell and in, and that was just another signal that this game was not going to go the Stars’ way.

“We get a goal early in the third and it’s a one-goal game with 17, 18 minutes left, and then a puck from behind the net goes in off Esa, another bounce,” Rantanen said. “You need to capitalize on your bounces in the playoffs, and they did.”

The Oilers added an empty-net goal for the final, and that was somewhat appropriate. As much as the individual game scores didn’t always reflect the play of the game, it was clear that Edmonton was the better team in a lot of different ways. These same Oilers beat the Stars in six games last season before losing in the Stanley Cup Final to Florida, but this team looks a lot better than that one.

“I can tell you on the other side, that Edmonton team is better than the team we played last year,” DeBoer said. “Deeper, defend harder, harder to play against. That’s a lot better team than the team we played last year in the conference final.”

And now, Dallas has all summer to look at ways to catch that team.

"Every year you learn new things,” Wyatt Johnston said. “This is not the end goal for us. You need to go through the conference final, and it's not easy to get there, but our goal is to win the Stanley Cup. I think you always want to learn, and I think that's good that you can learn from it…but we want to win."

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on X @MikeHeika.