Last series, we spent some time together wondering about all the ways we could find to send negative vibes directly towards the Colorado Avalanche. Well, good news: we did it! Colorado is golfing/margaritiaing/mountain biking their way through the offseason alongside the now-hungover Vegas ~Golden~ Knights. I’m not saying I deserve two medals for this accomplishment.
Meanwhile, Dallas is getting ready to steamroll two guys named Connor and Leon and some of their hapless friends. If you’d like to hear more about that, well, give a listen to the podcast Sean and I recorded Wednesday night the instant Gavin foolishly left his studio unattended. It’s not bad! You’ll notice I did not say that it was good, but I suppose some things are best understood implicitly, or misunderstood altogether. All that to say, here’s a realistic look at why Dallas should be confident about their chances going into Game 1 on Thursdady:
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So yeah, a podcast like that is all well and good if you’re into, like, hockey and stuff. But what if you’re just looking to root for someone, and you have no vested interest?
Here’s a scenario: your brother-in-law is hanging out at the house with you while your sister and the nieces and nephews are doing some fun activity with the grandparents, and your brother-in-law asks you something like this: “Dallas, eh? So tell me: why should I want the Stars to win?”
You have a choice to make, in this moment.
Sure, you can talk about your own journey of fandom. You can hope to trigger some sympathetic response in his heart that leads him to root for Dallas for your sake. But that’s not conversion, just diversion, and he probably would prefer to be doing something else anyway, like driving back home instead of being stuck watching sports with you. But he is stuck, and we have a plan. And anyway, neutral spectators tend to care less about who wins than who is going to suffer when they lose.
(I do not believe I need to support this with scientific evidence, but: schadenfreude is far more relatable than any sort of mutual delight, particularly when it comes to arbitrary amusements like sports. Try watching the Cowboys during the playoffs in a crowded bar, and you will surely find one or two neutral fans who forge a deep and lifelong friendship because they shared a mirthful glance at the moment of America’s Team suffering its latest heartbreak.)
So, we’re looking to convince this hypothetical dude, for an afternoon, that one of the teams he’s watching with current disinterest–namely Edmonton–actually represents something so completely loathsome that he won’t bat an eye at delighting in their defeat. How do we do that?
Well, we could talk about Connor McDavid (who is very good, you may have heard), but that risks awakening some sympathy for McDavid’s incredibly tragic plight. Or, worse, it risks him finding the above picture on Google, which would make anyone want this poor, poor man to experience some joy. Can’t go that route.
Leon Draisaitl has been a lifelong number two, but this playoff run has seen him earning a lot of deserved praise. So perhaps you could explain how Edmonton got a ton of first-overall draft picks in a row, but how this dude drafted third overall (between Florida Panthers refugees Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett, in fact!) is an example of Edmonton’s privilege, and how they don’t deserve to win with so many things being handed to them. But then he might ask how Edmonton got all those high draft picks to begin with, and then you’ll have to talk about how the Oilers have put their fans through utter misery in a variety of different ways. Again, too risky. Can’t have anyone feeling sorry for them!
So maybe we talk about Evander Kane, and how he submitted a fake vaccine card during the throes of outbreaks and shutdowns. But then again, Kane has also suffered from gambling addiction, and with ESPN and everyone else setting aside integrity in order to shove sports betting down our throats at every opportunity, maybe we take a minute before being too hard on the guy, eh?
Or we could talk about how Zach Hyman scored 54 goals out of almost nowhere this year, and how this team surely can’t sustain that sort of pace, and how getting humbled by Dallas would be good for all involved. But then again, Zach Hyman was involved in one of the most idiotic moments in hockey media this year, so it’s best not to point anyone in that direction right now.
Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way, though. Maybe we need to talk about former Stars connections! How about Mattias Janmark, the former Stars player who played 26 games in the 2020 playoff bubble and only scored 1 goal? Sounds like betrayal to me! Except for one small thing, which is that Janmark is an immensely likeable guy who also overcame a degenerative knee condition, beating the odds to even be sustaining an NHL career at this point.
Or, what about longtime Oilers? Sam Gagner used to torment Dallas and deserves to pay for that, except he probably won’t even be in the lineup to start the series. That’s…something, I guess?
But hey, someone who will be playing a lot of minutes is Darnell Nurse, who was grouchy (and got penalized for his gripes) in the 5-0 thumping Dallas laid on Edmonton back in April. But then again, a decent human being (read: not this author) would not want him to suffer more than he already has, which is to say being an Edmonton Oiler is punishment enough for anyone.
Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm are going to be intimidating defensemen whose names you will hear frequently, yes. But neither of them can really get someone to love or hate a team in an instant, or even an entire afternoon, I don’t think. If anything, watching Bouchard pound shots from the point might accidentally win someone over, and we are not trying to make people love Sheldon Souray’s logical nephew here. Boo! Boo these men! But do not hope for them to inspire hatred in someone not already looking for it.
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has two last names, which already makes you want to know more about him, so that’s not useful to our purposes. Warren Foegele’s name looks like a rejected gourmet pasta, I guess? Is that anything? Connor Brown is definitely a real person, and you definitely can picture his face exactly, right now, in your head. Got it? Okay, here’s his headshot:
Yes, we’re all very proud of you, well done. Great job, you know hockey players. Anyway, let’s keep going.
What about Ryan McLeod? That reminds me of Cody McLeod, the former insufferable “tough guy” who now works for Minnesota! Maybe they are cousins or something, and we can use reverse nepotism (real thing) to dislike him by association? Nope, turns out that this McLeod is related only to Michael McLeod, over in New Jersey. Though I will say, this headshot is definitely bringing the “would’ve been the rich college hockey team to play the Ducks in D4, if Disney had ever made it” energy:
But yeah, I don’t think that’s a really concise argument for rooting against the Oilers so much as allowing Canadian hockey players to choose their own haircuts to begin with. Moving on.
Oh, really quickly: that was actually not Connor Brown up there, but Derek Ryan, sorry. That’s my mistake. Connor Brown is, in fact, a redhead, which makes it easier to remember when you see his picture, which I have included below:
Wait, is that really Connor Brown, or is that Warren Foegele? *checks* Okay, turns out that’s Warren Foegele, I think. Here’s Connor Brown.
Whoops, sorry, that was actually Miles Wood, who is basically More Canadian Warren Foegele, but he beat Jake Oettinger to this post, so he got included. Anyway, here’s the actual Connor Brown:
Also, I included Warren Foegele’s headshot again, because I genuinely don’t think you’ll be able to tell these two apart once they’ve got helmets slapped on top of ’em and a linesman is pulling them away from a scrum. Better start practicing now!
Okay, right, how to make someone hate the Edmonton Oilers? That’s a weird premise for a post, man. Did you really think you could just pull up a roster and immediately make a digestible and persuasive argument for why a neutral observer should want a player on this team to experience sadness? That seems ambitious to me. Maybe you should’ve just dropped the podcast and called it a night, eh? After all, who on earth are you going to find at this point that would engender such loathing that –
Oh. Oh, that’s right.
Okay, well Corey Perry got replaced by Sam Carrick at the end of the second round, so surely he won’t even be factoring into the series, and why not root for him to get a Cup ring on his way out of the league?
Okay, sure, that’s not great, but name one other time when
No no, not that time, we don’t even know what happened! I mean name one other time on the ice when this former Hart Trophy winner (who once scored almost as many goals as Zach Hyman!) did anything less than acquit himself with dignity on the –
Fine, fine, I get it. The dude has played on the edge. But it’s not like you should really root for anyone to suffer, after all. Can you really tell me that even Corey Perry would somehow bring you joy if he had to endure heartbreak? What would that even look like, a player giving you a fond memory by way of his own pain? That seems dark, man. You can’t go around asking for that sort of thing to happen. The universe just doesn’t work that wa-
Stars in five.
Stars Thoughts: Robert Tiffin's attempt to understand the Dallas Stars and everything else 
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