Dallas Battling for Second Wildcard in NHL Western Conference
With the NHL regular season winding to an end, fringe teams are battling for a playoff berth while other teams are battling for home-ice advantage.
In just over 24 hours, the NHL’s Dallas Stars defeated Nashville at home, flew to St. Louis that same night and surprised the top team in the league with a win 4-2 the next day.
Following that game, the players once again showered, packed their luggage and were off to their next city as part of their current five game road trip that will define their season.
The Stars now must play on the road against the Washington Capitals, Carolina Hurricanes, Tampa Bay Lightning and the Florida Panthers.
Dallas sits one point behind the Phoenix Coyotes for the second Western Conference wild card spot but has one game in hand over Phoenix. In the final game of the regular season, the two teams will play in Phoenix.
Lindy Ruff, the Stars coach said the St. Louis game was important, especially starting the five game trip on the road with a win.
Tyler Seguin continues to lead the Stars in the scoring department, but help is coming for more places than what most would think.
Dallas is all about the future. The team has a new General Manager, new coaches and an emerging team that is very young and talented.
Dallas is battling against their own history of being on the playoff bubble and coming up short. The Stars have missed out on the postseason for five consecutive seasons.
GM of the Stars Jim Nill knows there is a fine balance between needing to have immediate success and building a sustainable hockey product in a market that is hungry for the club to return to its glory days of the 1990s and the early 2000s.
Nill sees his Stars as being ahead of their learning curve in his first season since joining Dallas during the offseason from Detroit. He gives coach Ruff the credit for putting the team where it is at now.
He calls the atmosphere around the club collegial with many players and management watching hockey into the wee hours of the morning. He refers to that group, which includes himself, as hockey junkies.
Nill knows the big picture is his responsibility, to look at the long term, but with the Stars having a chance to end their playoff drought now is not lost on him. He calls the situation they are in now huge.
Dallas fans have had it tough due to the recent failures of the club over the past five seasons. Those failures have lead to ownership changes, GM changes and coaching changes.
Much attention has been put on the importance of goaltender Kari Lehtonen. The netminder came to the Stars from Atlanta in 2010 and he too has seen the disappointment the players and fans have had in the three seasons he has been in Dallas.
Lehtonen tries to down play that he is key to the playoff hopes of the club. He would rather go out game by game to prepare to do the best he can to give his team the best chance possible of winning.
Dallas has not had to rely only on top scorers Seguin and Jamie Benn. In the win at St. Louis, Colton Sceviour scored two goals and Antoine Roussel and Cody Eakin each had one.
Dallas has six players that have scored 13 to 16 goals this season helping Benn’s 30 and Seguin’s 32.
That depth in scoring is helping them in crucial games as they fight for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.
