There’s no better way to ignite a run toward the Stanley Cup than by not only having to prove yourselves against the defending champs but doing it after starting in an 0-2 hole. Place a big check mark in the Stars’ corner following their 2-1 victory Sunday night in the seventh consecutive tight, tense game that Vegas and Dallas played.
The Stars advanced because of their superior scoring depth, something that served this team well en route to finishing first in the Western Conference. Dallas was the only NHL team with eight 20-game scorers, and they went beyond that level in this series with big goals from Evgenii Dadonov, Ty Dellandrea and finally, desperately, a third-period Game 7 game-winning backhand off the stick of Radek Faksa. It’s a testament to the manner in which GM Jim Nill built this club, to how veteran coach Pete DeBoer has guided them and to the players’ belief in a system that works.
Now all they need is more.
With no real rest, the Stars will host Colorado on Tuesday, a much different team from Vegas even though the Avs won the Stanley Cup the year before the Golden Knights prevailed. If Dallas can dispose of the last two champions before reaching the Western Conference finals, it feels like the Stars can handle any challenge thrown their direction. But keep in mind Colorado plays a different style than the strong defensive Golden Knights.
Put it this way. Dallas and Vegas each scored 16 goals in the tightest seven-game series you will ever see where every goal was huge, where scoring chances were things to cherish.
The Avalanche has been waiting patiently for this series to end after disposing of Winnipeg in five games. Colorado outscored the Jets 27-15 in the first round.
Whereas no team got to five goals in seven Dallas-Vegas games, Colorado scored at least five goals every night against the Jets. And Winnipeg has the division’s best goaltender in Connor Hellebuyck.
Colorado made a four-time Vezina Trophy look like a journeyman backup with an .870 save percentage. The Stars’ Jake Oettinger was much better in the second week of this Vegas series than he was in the first week, but he could be great and not hold Colorado to barely two goals a night as he did against Vegas.
The Stars can’t live with zero points in seven games from Joe Pavelski. They can’t survive with one point (an empty-net goal) in seven games from Roope Hintz. It’s fine to get special play from 20-year-old Wyatt Johnston, and there’s no reason for that not to continue. We are no longer surprised by anything he does, even when he opened the Game 7 scoring with an unassisted goal 14 minutes into the first period.
The Stars’ depth allows DeBoer to spread the scoring talent among three lines (make it four when Faksa or Dellandrea add to the mix), but Dallas has to nail a higher percentage of its scoring chances than it did against Vegas. When chances come Jamie Benn’s or Matt Duchene’s way, as they did ever so briefly in Game 7, they can’t fire high and wide. Colorado even sports a hot goalie (unusual for the Avs) in Alexandar Georgiev, who won four straight while holding the Jets to eight goals the last four games after losing a wild 7-6 opener.
So it’s a quick turnaround and a wildly different challenge that greets Dallas, but that doesn’t mean the Stars aren’t up to the task. It took them a minute — well, 120 minutes, to be frank — to get their game to the level they needed to steal the flow from Vegas and become the aggressor. with the superior scoring chances. In the process, they won four of five games from the defending champs and restored a little home pride by winning the last two games at the AAC.
Colorado won three out of four games against Dallas in the regular season, and the Avs roughed up Oettinger a fair amount. You really have to wonder if DeBoer can keep playing just five defensemen most of the time (Nils Lundkvist played 3:09 Sunday night, which was not far below his average for the series).
That’s why it’s imperative that the big scorers — Jason Robertson and Hintz and some sort of revival from Pavelski and, of course, Johnston — perform in this next round. It’s not like the Stars have completely forgotten how to put the puck in the net. In fact, only one team in the West outscored Dallas. That team is coming to town after scoring 27 goals in five nights (5.4 average) against the team that yielded the fewest goals in the NHL this season.
It’s a task the Stars can handle, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they already faced their toughest foe.
