One crazy ride: Reminiscing on the Stars’ remarkable 2025-26 regular season campaign

As Wyatt Johnston craftily deposited the puck for the winning goal in the shootout in Buffalo on Wednesday, a familiar feeling of potential and achievement engulfed the Dallas Stars community.

Yes, Dallas put together another campaign with 50-plus wins and 100-plus points. And yes, the team is heading to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the seventh time in the last eight seasons. The stage is set, the opponent is known and the postseason race begins on Saturday.

But before we dive into that, we have a brief opportunity to pause and reflect on just how we got to this point. And as you look back on the previous 189 days, one specific exclamation comes to mind.

“Wow, what a ride.”

It might feel like a blur, and that’s okay. With the compressed schedule due to a three-week break for the Winter Olympics, stretches like 12 games in 21 days or seven in 11 weren’t uncommon and created a seemingly never-ending drip of hockey games.

But now that the Stars have a chance to step back for a day before practicing on Friday in preparation for Game 1 of the First Round against Minnesota (Saturday, 4:30 PM CT), let’s stop to assess the past six months.

There’s plenty to unpack, so let’s start at the beginning.

When the Stars set out on their 2025-26 regular season, a dose of cautious optimism greeted the team as the puck dropped at Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg on Oct. 9. Sure, Dallas was fresh off of three consecutive trips to the Western Conference Final and once again looked like a legitimate Cup contender on paper. But there was no telling how that would translate onto the ice until the marathon got underway.

But pressure and adversity quickly arrived in the form of an 0-3-1 skid to create an altogether cloudy first two weeks. And while the door to sweat or panic cracked open, the Stars stuck with it. After an odd 7-5 loss to the Ducks on Nov. 6, the team rattled off a five-game win streak and finished the month on a 10-1-1 run. The good times continued to roll into the Christmas break as Dallas pieced together an 8-2-2 record through the first dozen games of December.

The fact that they sat second in the NHL standings (25-7-6) and boasted the second-best goals per game (3.50) and power play percentage (31.6%) at the break was nothing short of impressive. But it’s how they managed to get there that was worthy of applause.

In what would become a constant theme of the season, Dallas had to manage a revolving door lineup. Captain Jamie Benn missed the first 19 games of the campaign with a collapsed lung, while Matt Duchene missed 25 of the first 29 games with a concussion. That’s two of the team’s top five scorers over the previous two seasons on the shelf. On the blue line, Nils Lundkvist missed 25 games with a lower-body injury, while Thomas Harley missed 12.

Around the time that most of that group returned to the lineup, Tyler Seguin’s season ended due to a torn ACL and Lian Bichsel was sidelined for 31 games with an ankle injury.

And yet, the Stars kept finding ways to persevere and endure. From power play prowess to multi-goal comebacks, Dallas kept a steady presence atop the NHL leaderboards.

That steadiness was challenged a bit out of the break, though, as the Stars fell into a 2-6-3 swoon. The scoring dried up and the back end hit a funk as Dallas drifted outside the NHL’s top five. Losing four games on a season-long six-game road trip in January put a stamp on the skid, and a flat 4-1 loss to the Lightning in their first home game back sounded the alarm.

But like all good teams do, they found a way out of it and did so in historic fashion.

From Jan. 23 to March 15, the Stars did not lose a game in regulation. The team strung together a 15-game point streak that tied the franchise record, posting six straight wins going into the Olympic break and picking up where they left off with an 8-0-1 surge out of the break. The 14-0-1 stretch lofted them back near the top of the NHL leaderboard and helped them shrink a 12-point gap behind the first place Avalanche down to just two by mid-March.

The trade deadline brought depth with the arrival of defenseman Tyler Myers and forward Michael Bunting, while Arttu Hyry was recalled from the AHL and became a mainstay in the Dallas lineup. Roope Hintz suffered a lower-body injury on March 6 and missed the final 20 games of the season. And after a 1-4-2 stumble to end March, the Stars closed the season on a 6-1-0 note, including two shutouts by Jake Oettinger and a five-game win streak to cap it off.

The win in Buffalo marked the Stars’ third consecutive season with 50 or more wins, a first for the franchise. Their 20 regulation losses are the third-fewest in a full season in franchise history, while a 24-9-8 record away from home marks the fewest road regulation losses in franchise history. To top it all off, their 112 points ties the third-most in the franchise’s 58 seasons and sit just two short of the record set by the 1998-99 Cup-winning club.

In addition, they navigated a franchise-best 46 games decided by one goal and came up with 28 one-goal wins to lead the NHL. And to further highlight the “dig in and find a way” mentality, their 23 comeback wins ranked fourth in the NHL, including a league-best 10 rallies by multiple goals.

Johnston and Jason Robertson reached rare air, becoming the first pair of teammates with 45 goals each in a season in franchise history. Johnston led the

NHL with a franchise-record 27 power play goals, while Robertson became the first player in Dallas history with multiple 90-point seasons.

Mavrik Bourque hit 20 goals and 41 points in just his second NHL season, while Justin Hryckowian posted 30 points in his rookie campaign. Benn scored his 400th career goal, Seguin played in his 1,000th game and Sam Steel posted new career-highs with 12 goals, 21 assists, 33 points and 5 game-winning goals despite missing nine games.

In the crease, Oettinger became the only goaltender in the NHL with 35-plus wins in each of the past four seasons, while Casey DeSmith posted 15 wins to tie his career-high.

In his first stint as a head coach since 2017-18, Gulutzan guided an injury-plagued lineup filled with experience and youthful exuberance to the third-best record in the NHL and home ice in the First Round. He managed to push all the right buttons and get the “one percent” more that he had set his sights on acquiring since being hired on July 1. Graham, meanwhile, led a power play unit that led the NHL in goals while posting the top percentage in franchise history and second-best in the league in his first season behind an NHL bench. To top it all off, Nasreddine coached the Dallas defense to the second-best goals against average in the NHL, its best finish since 2020.

That’s a long, roundabout way of saying that the 2025-26 regular season was nothing short of a roaring success.

But the story doesn’t end here.

With the Stars set to go toe-to-toe with the Wild in the First Round, the book is wide open for more twists and turns to be written into this year’s journey as Dallas looks to take that next step forward in contending for the Cup

And if it’s anywhere close to the adrenaline rush of the first 82 games, we’re in for one remarkable ride.

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

Josh Clark is a writer for DallasStars.com. Follow him on X @Josh\\\_Clark02.