Dallas Stars’ Western Conference Burning and the Signs There – Hockey Writer – Dallas Stars

In the Western Conference Finals, we have had three more days of sleep from the disappointing and shocking collapse and elimination of the Dallas Stars. Elimination itself is not necessarily surprising, but the way it happens is undoubtedly. These teams are disrespectful, but if it were Minnesota Balcony or St. Louis Blues, they lost to the Edmonton Oilers in five games, that’s what the stars did, and their fans would make their team stand out. To be fair, some celebrity fans did. But when you’re a team that’s already in a third, expectations are very high, rightfully so.

Related: Star’s Pete Deboer’s comment on Jake Oettinger is the dock

As we look back at the stars’ 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs, there are a lot of extraordinary moments, followed by an emotional climax and belief in what May and June might be. But now we are here, everything makes sense. The heroic spirit of Mikko Rantanen, the hat trick of Mikael Granlund, the spectacular drama of Jake Oettinger, and the incredible consistency of the special team, all covered up and saved the stars from the problem of staring at our entire face. As these things dry in the conference finals, so are the bad stars, it’s hard to review their runs with rose-colored glasses and celebrate the positive moments that happened.

This is still a very outstanding team and should be a bright future. There will be some time to look forward to the next step of this team throughout the summer. Unfortunately, not today. Let’s take a look at the first two rounds and how the chickens come home to deal with the oilers.

Stars can’t score first

In the first round of the game against the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas won 4-3 and the stars beat 24-21, while the Avalanche scored all but one game. In matches 1, 4, 6 and 7, the Avalanche started the game with a two-goal lead or more, putting the stars out of the word “Go” behind the eight goals. In Game 6, the star fell from 2-0 to lead 4-3, and then the Avalanche put the pedal on the metal in the third stage to win 7-4. Game 7 was the only game they successfully fell behind, winning the game 4-2 after a 2-0 win in the third stage.

In that opening series, the power play and penalty kills were extraordinary. Oettinger stood on his head, many of them, and Stars hit more than 34.4 to 26.6 per game. However, it was the four-part stage of Game 7 Rantanen, which included three goals, which drove our conversation for months now.

Star won the first goal in four of six games and beat the Winnipeg Jets in a 4-2 round of wins, 14-13. In two of these games, the Jets had a two-goal lead, and in both games the stars were turned away. In Game 1, Dallas scored 3-2 with a 2nd stage score, with all five goals scoring the Jets first and last scores. The three goals were again Rantanen’s score, and Star escaped the first game with good resonance.

Three games won in overtime in the 10 games that the opponent scored first, including a win against the Jets in Game 6. That was three games and could be played.

If you win the series, you should keep moving forward. But it was the skin of two wheels of teeth, and eventually, their luck had to be exhausted.

Great special team, not so great 5-on-5

In round 1, 14 of the 24 goals they allowed were five-on-five, but out of the remaining 10 goals, there were only three goals when the stars were stabbed. The rest were four four-on-four corners of the Avalanche, when the Avalanche’s extra skaters, or so defensively, five-on-five points weren’t bad. In the first round, 7 of Xingxing’s 21 goals scored in the strong game, and 2 entered an empty net. In seven games, only 12 even goals were left.

When you compare it to what we observed in the Colorado statistics, it doesn’t look that bad. But it is the context of the goal that makes me pay more attention to me and look back on the past. In the unforgettable Game 7, only five-on-five out of four goals were scored. Three of their seven goals were scored in the power play in the first four games. In Games 5 and 6, they scored seven of 10 goals, which is the majority of their five-on-five goals in the series.

Against the Jets, 8 of their 13 goals were five-on-five, which looks pretty good. But when you think they were turned away in two of the six games, and three of the last five goals in the series (in three) were in the power game, these signs are there again and suggest that the big goal is avoiding them.

Lack of depth scores in the first two rounds

In the first two rounds, Star scored 34 goals. Of 19 of them, Lantanan has a point of view, including nine goals. Thomas Harley had 4 goals and 11 points, Roope Hintz had 5 goals and 10 points, and that was the double-digit player. Three players. Maybe it wasn’t bad at the time, but now we know that this is a foreshadowing of what will happen next.

In this article, we mention four goals scorers: Lantnana, Hinz, Halle and Grandlund. Wyatt Johnston (IV) and Tyler Seguin (Two) were the only other players to score goals in two rounds. Jason Robertson was injured in the final game of the season and played only, but Mason Marchment, Evgenii Dadonov and Jamie Benn each scored one goal, and Matt Duchene didn’t score until then.

Looking back, why do we think this suddenly changed in the last game before the Stanley Cup final?

The advantages of stars passing 2 rounds

I discussed this in detail with all the other writers and podcasters covering the stars, not to mention coach Pete Deboer, but there are three major reasons why the stars make it to the Western Conference Finals.

First, in the first two rounds, their strong action rate was 30.8%. Second, their fine kills were 86.1%. Finally, Oettinger is very good. We won’t break down all his numbers and dig deeper, but Oettinger was their best player in both rounds, despite his team’s lack of offensive ability.

We won’t get this deeper, but be aware that when we fit in everything, be careful.

It finally bites the stars against the oil workers

As we mentioned at the beginning, the fact that the Stars lost to the Oilers was not shocking. It seems everyone predicts that the series will be played in seven games, which means anyone can win the game. But, like we mentioned, the way they got lost was disappointing and shocking. But should it really be shocking after sorting out the entire two rounds of the game? Surely disappointing, but maybe not shocking.

In the Western Conference final, the star beat 22-11 and scored his first goal in all five games. Of their 11 goals, five of them scored even, five of them were in the power play, and one of them was an empty net. Robertson and Seguin scored six of these goals and were the only players to score more than one goal.

Related: 2025 Stanley Cup Final Center

Again, they can’t get more than two people at once. Again, they can’t do five-on-five jobs, and so does their scoring ability when the opportunity to exert strength drys up. In the previous round, they were able to use their several opportunities to hide the fact that they would let the Oettinger dry each night. In the game against the Oilers, all the wrong things were exposed last month’s game.

Their strength game was still 35.7% in those five games, but many of them were due to three goals in Game 1. Free throw kills, the team’s strength in the regular season and playoffs, dropped to 62.5% in five games. This is probably the most tragic part of the series. Except goalkeepers, the best parts of the team stand out from the map when all other weaknesses are exposed.

By next season

We have a full three months to talk about what the stars look like in the 2025-26 season. Yes, there are some things that need to be changed, but in most cases they are in good condition. For now, it is still hard to believe how fast they were dispatched by the Oilers. Again, based on 13 games, maybe we should have always expected it.