DALLAS \u2014\u00a0It\u2019s a remarkable thing how 18,000 people can go from foaming at the mouth to deathly silent in the time it takes a puck to travel 23 feet, but that\u2019s what happened at American Airlines Center on Saturday night when Joel Eriksson Ek one-timed a one-touch pass from Matt Boldy and blasted it past Jake Oettinger in the first period of the first game of the first-round series between the Minnesota Wild and the Dallas Stars.<\/p>\n
In the postseason, to a fan, every goal against feels apocalyptic; hope, confidence and optimism instantly dissolve like smoke in the breeze. It\u2019s part of the fun, right? Those wild swings of emotion, those Himalayan highs and those Mariana lows. Every goal-for just won the Stanley Cup. Every goal-against just lost it.<\/p>\n
Ah, but the Stars know better, right? This is a group that has largely stayed intact through nine playoff series in the last three springs, making three straight trips to the Western Conference final. It\u2019s a team that\u2019s famous for its slow starts \u2014 they lost eight straight Game 1s before finally beating Winnipeg in the second-round opener last May \u2014 and even more famous for winning anyway. Tried and tested. Wizened but wise.<\/p>\n
Hell, these Stars are leaning into their history. Hard. They\u2019re proud of their past \u2014\u00a0frustrated by it, sure, but grateful for the lessons it taught them, too. The pregame hype video at AAC focused on those three Western Conference final losses, a shoegaze cover of Linkin Park\u2019s \u201cIn The End\u201d droning over sepia-toned images of Dallas players burying their heads in their hands on the bench, trudging off the ice unsatisfied, uncrowned. You know, unfinished business and all that. The Stars know what it feels like to lose a series, and they know it doesn\u2019t feel like this.<\/p>\n
And so after getting run out of their own building Saturday night in a 6-1 loss, the Stars did what they always do after a Game 1 loss to the Wild: They shrugged it off. They stayed calm. Chill. Unhappy, sure, but unconcerned. Remember, they lost 5-1 to Colorado in Game 1 of the first round last year, and that eventually worked out fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lost last year, and we\u2019ve lost a lot of Game 1s here, I\u2019ve heard,\u201d Mikko Rantanen said. \u201cSo I\u2019m not too worried.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, maybe they should be. At least that would show a pulse.<\/p>\n
Look, it\u2019s good to be composed in defeat, to not spiral and panic. That\u2019s a mark of mental toughness, and it goes a long way in the playoffs. Nobody\u2019s saying the Stars should be freaking out and panicking. But they should be furious with themselves. Because it\u2019s one thing to lose Game 1. It\u2019s another to lose it in this fashion. The Stars treated the first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs like it was the 53rd game of the regular season. They had no juice, no hop in their step. Their forecheck was non-existent, giving Minnesota easy clear after easy clear, every possession a none-and-done. Their penalty kill was passive; their defensemen lost seemingly every 50\/50 puck.<\/p>\n
Say what you will about the silliness of the staged captains fight that kicked off Game 1 of the Senators-Hurricanes series earlier in the day, but at least both of those teams came out swinging.<\/p>\n
The Stars came out sleeping. And if Game 1 served as a wakeup call, you couldn\u2019t tell afterward.<\/p>\n
Jake Oettinger doesn\u2019t have to flip over tables in the locker room after being hung out to dry, but maybe something a little more fiery than, \u201cI don\u2019t think we played our best game, but we played a lot of playoff series and lost a lot of Game 1s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miro Heiskanen doesn\u2019t have to shatter sticks against the walls of the tunnel, but maybe something a little more spicy than, \u201cIt\u2019s a long series, it\u2019s a best-of-seven, it\u2019s one game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glen Gulutzan doesn\u2019t have to throw his goalie under the bus, but maybe something a little more frustrated than, \u201cI think we all have a little bit more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because this isn\u2019t a typical first-round series. Thanks to Gary Bettman\u2019s stubborn refusal to acquiesce to literally the entire hockey world and abandon the divisional playoff format, we\u2019re getting a conference-final-caliber matchup in the first round. No, the Wild don\u2019t have the experience or the track record of the Stars, but they\u2019ve got a similar depth of talent. And while Rantanen was taking two offensive-zone stick penalties and Wyatt Johnston was a non-factor at five-on-five (he did assist on Jason Robertson\u2019s power-play goal) and Heiskanen was easing his way back in from injury, the Wild\u2019s stars came to play. Matt Boldy had two goals and an assist, Kirill Kaprizov scored on a spectacular short-side snipe, Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber controlled play from the back end and Mats Zuccarello doled out three assists. The meek Stars didn\u2019t even bother testing rookie Minnesota goalie Jesper Wallstedt until the game was already in hand.<\/p>\n
The Wild are playing for an organization and a fan base that has endured eight straight first-round losses and five straight playoff series in which they\u2019ve led but lost. The State of Hockey wants this. Needs this. And you could feel it in the way their team played. They had urgency; the Stars had none. And don\u2019t forget, it took Rantanen going thermonuclear to a level rarely seen in the history of the NHL \u2014 11 points in Games 5-7 \u2014 for Dallas to pull out that series against Colorado last year. Relying on that kind of individual performance is a dicey proposition, to say the least.<\/p>\n
Dallas knows this. Yet Dallas keeps doing this. Series after series, year after year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re doing it on purpose,\u201d Rantanen said. \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019ve done it on purpose for years. It\u2019s just how it went. It\u2019s not ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n
No, it\u2019s not. After a few questions, Oettinger relented and said of such an anemic start, \u201cIt\u2019s not acceptable,\u201d but he said it almost defensively. The Stars remain unruffled. Maybe that\u2019s OK. History suggests it is. But if you\u2019re a Stars fan, or a Stars coach, or a Stars front-office member, it has to be utterly infuriating.<\/p>\n
If you can\u2019t get up for opening night of the Stanley Cup playoffs, what can you get up for?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt certainly didn\u2019t look like a playoff game from our point of view,\u201d Gulutzan said.<\/p>\n
Gulutzan was an assistant coach for Edmonton, watching from the other side as Dallas came up short in the last two Western Conference finals, but he knows well what his new team has been through. And he doesn\u2019t feel urgency, doesn\u2019t sense too much frustration with three true chances at a championship squandered. Instead, he senses resolve and a healthy big-picture perspective. He senses a mature, winning attitude.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s another bingo ball in there,\u201d Gulutzan said. \u201cYou\u2019ve just got to get to the playoffs, you\u2019ve got to get there and try again and learn from your mistakes, then you\u2019ve got to get there again and try again and learn again. It\u2019s not just going to happen the first time somebody makes the playoffs; it\u2019s very rare. So I don\u2019t feel that urgency with them, which is a good thing. But I feel more of that commitment from them, that they\u2019re going to try to push this even further. You\u2019ve got to keep getting yourself in the dance.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Robertson put it, each year is a \u201creset.\u201d Losing last year doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll win this year, just as winning last year doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll win this year. But the reps count. All those wins are lessons, just as all those losses are lessons. And Dallas has learned so much.<\/p>\n
Maybe too much. No, it\u2019s not time to panic. But it is time to wake up. The Wild are every bit the challenge that Colorado was last year. And if Dallas doesn\u2019t get its act together \u2014 if Oettinger doesn\u2019t dial in, if the penalty kill doesn\u2019t figure something out, if the defense doesn\u2019t keep their controllers plugged in at all times, if the Stars don\u2019t start playing like they\u2019re in the freaking Stanley Cup playoffs \u2014 there won\u2019t be a fourth deep run in their future.<\/p>\n
There won\u2019t even be another Game 1 for them to lose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS \u2014\u00a0It\u2019s a remarkable thing how 18,000 people can go from foaming at the mouth to deathly silent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[462],"tags":[147,5,38,4,465,466],"class_list":{"0":"post-555714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-draft","8":"tag-dallas-stars","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-minnesota-wild","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-nhl-draft","13":"tag-nhl-entry-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116429126818846933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}