Everything I Needed to Know about the Dallas Stars, I Learned in the First Game of the Season

The NHL season is a long, arduous journey. Playing 82 games must be really tough, because watching 82 games is certainly no picnic. Actually, it’s better than picnics, which are largely overrated and cumbersome, but we’re not here to talk about picnics. We are here, on the internet, to spend time talking about how we could’ve saved a bunch of time.

Specifically, we could’ve saved a lot of time in watching the 101 games of the Dallas Stars season and playoff run. In fact, I think you could make the argument that the very first game of the season, way back on October 12, told us everything we needed to know.

Sure, every Stars game is a gift, and we know that’s never truer than in the dog days of a Texas summer that tries to kill you for daring to stand outside for five minutes. But if you could’ve used 100 of those game nights to do something productive, like finally finishing that book you keep pretending you’re going to read but never will (sorry, but someone had to say it) then good news! You could’ve stopped after the first game of the season and known exactly how things were going to play out.

Join me, won’t you?

Oh, by the way, Roope Hintz missed this game with an upper-body injury from the preseason. Seems like Hintz’s health was a talking point later in the season, but I’m going off memory so maybe I’m wrong. In fact, Hintz would only miss two games in the regular season, tying his career high for starts in a season (80), but he would miss twice as many games in the playoffs, including a heartbreaking Game 1 double overtime loss against Edmonton that the Stars just never quite managed to grab, but I’m sure you’d probably forgotten about that by now. Good thing it doesn’t still hurt, or else you’d probably resent my mentioning it here. Lucky for me!

Anyway, the game: For the second season in a row, Mason Marchment scored the first Stars goal of the season, except oh wait, the first goal was called back for offside after a Johnston shot tipped by Marchment followed a just-barely-offside entry. Well, that’s okay, it’s not like Mason Marchment is going to be involved in another goal being called back at a really crucial moment or anything, probably nothing to worry about.

Again, we’re still in Game 1, which Jason Robertson refers to as his own personal preseason. But Jamie Benn also missed a preseason once upon a time, so he was ready to go right off the bat, scoring the Stars’ first actual goal and showing he would continue with his second straight resurgent season after struggling under the prior coaching regimes.

It wasn’t all good, though. The Blues would score a goal of their own, doing so with Esa Lindell and Jani Hakanpää on the ice like so:

Right from this moment (and even before, if we’re honest), it was clear that the Stars would need to upgrade their second defense pairings. But Jim Nill is a lovable rascal, so he waited another 75% of the season before actually fixing it with Chris Tanev, just because he likes to take us on a journey of mystery. We’ll all be grateful someday, I am sure.

Let’s see, what else, what else…oh, Dallas went 0-for-4 on the power play in this game, but if memory serves, they fixed the power play as the season went on, and its momentary ineffectiveness wouldn’t rear its head again at the worst possible time or anything. It’s nice that this problem was an inconsequential one and that everything turned out fine. Hey, would it make you feel better to know Dallas had the 9th-best power play over the regular season?

Anyway, back to this game, which is a fun one, by the way. Not for Joe Pavelski though, as he missed multiple Grade A scoring chances, being particularly robbed by Binnington in the second period on this look.

Now, I’m going to have to pore over the playoff stats books in a few minutes here, but I do know that Pavelski finished the season second on the entire team in scoring (yes really), so I’m going to assume he stopped missing great chances and reverted to his clutch form when it mattered most in the playoffs, so…*holds finger to ear* ah. Okay folks, I’m now being told that Pavelski had the same scoreline as Ryan Suter in the playoffs while still getting the third-most ice time of any forward on the team. And, spoiler alert here, that is not a roundabout way of saying that Ryan Suter had a great scoreline in the postseason. In fact, Pavelski averaged more per ice time game than Benn, or Seguin, or Stankoven, or Duchene, or Hintz (Roope, you may remember). However, on the positive side, Pavelski did lead the team in plus/minus, if you count negative as a good thing. Silver linings!

In this game, however, Jake Oettinger was excellent while facing down Jordan Binnington Despite having a down season afterwards, Oettinger’s first game of the season told us what we all know, now: he was ready to be excellent when he was needed most. Oettinger showed us he had a final form, and he was able/allowed to save it for the playoffs. Sure, the Stars got goalie’d a bit by a subpar netminder, but thankfully they still won, and I’m being told now that they would end up facing Stuart Skinner in the Western Conference Final, so I’m sure they showed they knew how to handle up-and-down goalies playing out of their minds when the playoffs started, no worries there.

But before we skip ahead, there was one more Moment. In a dull third period, Nils Lundkvist would make a slick move to dance around a defender at the blue line, leading to a 3-on-2 for Dallas. Mason Marchment then loudly demanded the puck with a beaver tail as the trailer, but the determined Lundkvist set his jaw and fired, beating Binnington…but not the post.

Lundkvist, failing to do what his team wanted him to do, but very nearly succeeding in spite of it? Well, that sounds familiar, yeah. Go away, no one wants to talk about it.

Finally, the Stars made it to overtime, their nemesis from last year. Sure enough, the Stars’ best chance came with Jason Robertson and Miro Heiskanen creating a 2-on-1 right off the defensive zone faceoff, only for Robertson to get a great chance, only to somehow get stopped by Binnington.

You know, give the theme of this whole piece and the weird internal dialogue with feigned ignorance thing that’s been going on, I’m starting to wonder if maybe Jason Robertson would have another great overtime chance in the playoffs that he didn’t quite score? Is that the bit, dude? No, no, that’s ridiculous. Come on, this is the first game of the season folks, let’s all calm down here. The Stars made it to overtime, and they missed a chance. It happens. If there’s one thing you can say about Jason Robertson, it’s that he might miss one chance, but he certainly won’t miss two. Nothing to worry about.

And true enough, it was okay, because the Stars also drew a penalty on the rush against St. Louis, meaning they still had about 40 seconds of power play time to convert a game in overtime rather than leaving it to chance in the shootout. But you know what happened: they didn’t convert, and the Blues would get another chance. Hey, you know, that’s kind of like how the Oilers got another chance in the second overtime of Game 1 and Jason Robertson hit two posts on a power play in overtime, haha! The pain is all gone now, right? No? Oh, that’s my bad, sorry, I just assumed that no one else could feel anything either. Guess it’s just me, no big deal. Coping mechanisms, hurrah!

Anyway, yeah, the shootout went well. Jason Robertson showed up at last on the score sheet, and Matt Duchene added some depth scoring with a second (and winning) shootout goal, somewhat similar to Game 6 against Colorado, if you want to force a narrative. On the other end, Jake Oettinger saved two of three, and that’ll usually be enough when everyone does their jobs, unlike the very next game, when the Stars lost a shootout to Vegas, which obviously meant nothing and offered no insight, so don’t even bother looking it up. Just take my word for it: when the Dallas Stars show you who they are, believe them the first game.

(Unless it’s a Mason Marchment goal, in which case it’s definitely coming back.)