Stars are setting the standard in Dallas. Can they keep up their own pace post-Olympics?

With the Mavericks this spring, it’s all about whether they are going to get that lottery pick and what they might do with it. For the Cowboys, it has been all about their two first-round picks since early December. I’m not sure about the Rangers and the draft; they already traded their first-round pick from last summer before we could memorize his name (Gavin Fien, good luck in Washington). But it looks to me this year will be more about creeping over the .500 mark for the first time since 2023 than anything else.

With your Stars, it’s different. The pursuit of a championship is all there is. Conference finals exit and then conference finals exit and then conference finals exit over a three-year span will do that. Look at them now and they own a five-game win streak after Monday’s 4-3 overtime win against Winnipeg. The Mavericks haven’t had a five-game win streak since late 2024 when Luka and Kyrie were both playing. The Cowboys haven’t seen one since 2023.

But even that’s not enough. After Mikko Rantanen had scored the kind of breathtaking third-period goal Monday that he delivered for about two weeks straight against Colorado and Winnipeg last spring, he said, “Minnesota, they don’t lose a lot of games, so you can’t lose either if you wanna fight for the home ice [advantage] in the first round. So, it’s important to do things right.”

But the bigger thing he said was this: “It took us a little bit longer to get going, but we’re here now.”

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Here. Now.

Glance at the NHL standings and you’ll see Dallas in third place in the Central Division, one point behind Minnesota. But take a real look at the overall standings, and you’ll see that out of 32 teams, only two have better records — Tampa Bay and Colorado. The Wild have simply played one more game than Dallas, so only an extra-period loss places Minnesota ahead of the Stars.

This is the standard. This is what this franchise has become. Make a coaching change, get rid of one of the best if not always the most stable in the game in Pete DeBoer, and keep charging with an energized Glen Gultuzan. It helps when you have a front office with the rock solid Jim Nill in charge, incredibly the winner of three straight GM of the year awards (imagine that, Cowboys fans). He doesn’t want a fourth, he wants a Cup like everyone else connected with this team, and their current play has them at least chasing one as they prepare for a long Olympic break that makes everyone a little shaky.

The Stars have seven players, including four Finns, traveling to Milan for the Olympics this weekend. Injuries may yet get Jason Robertson, who scored his 31st goal Monday, in case Bill Guerin was watching, onto Team USA. So everyone crosses their fingers, hopes mostly for good health and then prays that an extended late season break doesn’t derail the momentum the Stars have managed to create in the last 10 days.

“When you get off to a good start like we did, and then you come out after Christmas and you think it’s going to be easy,” Gulutzan said. “And that’s not the way it works.”

The Stars were 25-7-5 on Dec. 21, pushing hard for another Presidents‘ Trophy. When the skid that Gulutzan referenced came to a close a month later, they were 28-14-9. That’s a 3-7-4 stretch that likely will keep them from pursuing Colorado even though the Avs recently fell apart against the Eastern Conference, losing not just to Tampa Bay and defending champ Florida but taking some hard losses elsewhere (7-3 to Washington, 7-3 to Philadelphia, 5-2 to Ottawa).

With all of that, Colorado remains six points ahead of the Stars with a couple of games in hand. Not impossible for Dallas to climb into that chase but if the Avs turn the corner at all, as they almost surely will, they’re too far out front for the Stars to think they are headed for anything but a first-round date with Minnesota.

First order of business, after wrapping up the pre-Olympic portion of the schedule against the lowly St. Louis Blues on Wednesday, is to stay the course when they return on Feb. 25 against Seattle.

“I think the adversity has made us take a look at ourselves and see what makes us successful and what makes us a better team,” Gulutzan said. “That extra one degree we’ve basically been talking about since I got here is in play, and that makes us a better team. And that’s what we’ve learned, and that adversity forced us in the right direction.”

Given that the last three Western Conference finals ended in six games, maybe the Stars need two degrees. Either way, they’re on the right track if a long winter’s nap here doesn’t derail them.

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