Pausing to ponder as another Stars season comes to a close

Ending your hockey season on the road is an oddly painful experience.

The Stars have done it twice in the past three years, including Thursday in Minnesota. The Game 6 loss in Edmonton in 2024 was especially annoying as the Oilers clinched a trip to the Stanley Cup Final, and those folks in Edmonton were pretty jacked up for that.

I can still hear the 3 a.m. car horns to this day.

But give the Wild fans their own respect. A trip to the Second Round was a decade in the making, so they also had a special kind of pent-up arrogance in their celebration. The walk back to the hotel across the street from the arena was like breaking up with your girlfriend at Mardi Gras – kind of surreal.

But in enduring moments like this, you do get to understand the emotional tilt-a-whirl that is sports. The highs are so high that you almost don’t understand them when you’re going through them. You need separation to see through the prism more clearly, you need to hunger for what “they” have.

We’ve been kind of spoiled here in Starsland lately. Three consecutive trips to the Western Conference Final have been heaped on top of a Stanley Cup Final appearance in the bubble in 2020. Since the COVID playoffs in August/September of 2020, no team has played more playoff games than the Lads in Victory Green’s 96 contests.

That’s a lot of nights on the couch there - a lot of entertainment for anyone who loves/hates this team. Now, that viewing pleasure includes plenty of disappointment as well. Dallas is 49-47 in that run, and for some of you, the 47 is more memorable. I get it.

This most recent run was a frustrating one. Not only did the Stars begin with a 6-1 loss at home, they struggled even after rebounding to take a 2-1 lead in the series. They were up 2-1 late in Game 4 and let Minnesota push it to overtime and eventually win that game. They were up 2-1 late in the second period of Game 6 and followed up their first 5-on-5 goal in 254 minutes by letting the Wild score less than a minute later.

“It’s what they do,” you tell yourself. ”I shouldn’t believe so hard.”

And yet that’s why we do this, because the belief can be invigorating and empowering. You follow sports teams for fun and entertainment, but also because you like the drama. You want to say when they win it that you were a part of the energy that helped bring the trophy to Texas. You want to say that you earned it.

This was an intriguing season. They brought in a new coaching staff, they once again had to navigate a rash of injuries, and they leaned heavily on their top players like Jason Robertson, Wyatt Johnston and Mikko Rantanen. The good news is that those guys are in their prime. Rantanen is 29, Robertson is 26, Johnston will turn 23 in a few days. That’s a heck of a core to build around.

The Stars have set up their negotiations well with Robertson. Either the two sides will come together on a long-term contract this summer or they would be able to trade the rights to Robertson for a big package of players and draft picks. The guess is the gifted goal-scorer stays, but they are also covered if he doesn’t.

After that, the rest of the contracts are pretty much taken care of. Among the core players who are here are: Jake Oettinger, Miro Heiskanen, Esa Lindell, Thomas Harley, Lian Bichsel, Roope Hintz, Matt Duchene, Sam Steel, Radek Faksa, Justin Hryckowian and Oskar Bäck. Jamie Benn still has to make a decision, but it seems he has a role if he wants it.

You are automatically a playoff team with that returning group.

What’s more, most of the players are on the upswing. Just by coming back healthy, the squad on paper is better. Hintz should be healthy, Tyler Seguin has one more year on his deal and Nils Lundkvist took a huge step this year despite injuries. If you mix Lundkvist with Bichsel and Heiskanen and Harley and Johnston and Robertson…the team should be better just because of experience.

Heck, Oettinger is at 71 career playoff games. He can use that experience even more going forward. Because of the aforementioned run of postseason play, many of the players have 60 games or more sewn into their sweaters. That should help.

Now, the critics will say it didn’t help this year, and they are right. Minnesota didn’t have the playoff experience, but it had the hunger. The Wild leadership and coaching staff found the right way to channel that hunger, and the Stars should try to learn from that.

Minnesota was the better team, the smarter team, the more efficient team. Why was that? It’s up to the Stars to figure it out over the next four months.

We can all agree that the NHL’s playoff format isn’t fair. It does not properly reward you for winning during the regular season. It routinely sends teams home early because of high-level First Round matchups. The Stars finished second in the Western Conference and were rewarded with a matchup with the third-best team in the West out of the gate. But it is what it is, so you have to live in this environment.

That said, you can also use the format as fuel. Colorado last year suffered a heartbreaking Game 7 loss in Dallas, one that was every bit as traumatizing as postgames for the Stars in Alberta or St. Paul. The Avalanche took that motivation and had the best regular season in the league this year.

They currently are sitting as the favorite to win it all after sweeping Los Angeles in the First Round.

Dallas can do the same thing.

The pieces are there, the structure is there, the motivation is there.

So bounce back from this, use your scar tissue, grow, mature, learn. The aftermath on Thursday was tough. The anti-Texas fun wasn’t fun at all for you.

But here’s a tip: Remember it. You might need it next year.

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.