Season Over, Dreams Over

Maybe next year.

Making it to the Western Conference Final three years in a row is definitely something to be proud of. Losing in the Western Conference Final in embarrassing fashion three years in a row is definitely not something that I’d want to hang my hat on, though.

Tonight, the Dallas Stars’ season ended after a catastrophic 6-3 defeat to the Edmonton Oilers in Game 5 of the Western Conference Final. From the start of the game, it was extremely clear that whatever the Stars had cooked up in the hours following Game 4 and heading into Game 5 was not going to work. Edmonton just had the juice, and they put on an absolute clinic.

Through eight minutes of play, the Stars were down 3-0, and Jake Oettinger had been pulled from his net. DeBoer had already called his timeout, and everybody in the AAC was down in the dumps. Heck, anybody within a 100-mile radius of the building was probably absolutely bummed. Dallas had mounted zero resistance to anything that the Oilers were throwing at them, and it was apparent to all watching that the clock had run out on the 2024-25 Stars.

Putting up that effort in an elimination game on home ice is just not acceptable. Since Game 2, where the Oilers won 3-0 in a dominant shutout, Dallas seemed checked out. After losing Game 3 on the road, it seemed like they just resigned themselves to their fate. I know that that’s not reality—these are professional athletes who pour their heart and soul into what they do—but it definitely seemed like the entirety of the team, with a few exceptions, decided that it was time to hit the links and call it a season.

I say all this knowing that the Stars did put up a decent effort after putting themselves in a massive hole. Jason Robertson scored midway through the first, and Roope Hintz made it a one-goal game on a power play halfway through the second period. But after Connor McDavid did Connor McDavid things and cushioned the Oilers’ lead back up to two goals via a breakaway where he simply outskated everybody in the building, it was string music in Dallas.

Now we’re all left wondering what could’ve been these past three seasons. What if Dallas could’ve just won Games 1 and 2 against Vegas in 2023 when both those contests went into overtime? What if they hadn’t blown a 2-0 lead in Game 4 against Edmonton last year and instead went up 3-1 in the series? Finally, what if the offense and penalty kill hadn’t disappeared these past several days, and instead of packing up their bags and heading to the beach, the Stars were preparing for a Stanley Cup Final against the Florida Panthers? We’ll never know. I wish we did.

Other than those wishes upon a star, some major questions face the Stars this offseason. Now is probably not the time to start all the hypotheticals about Jamie Benn’s future or whether Pete DeBoer is on thin ice, but those talking points will enter the atmosphere sooner rather than later. That’s just the nature of losing in the postseason. It only gets worse when it’s the third consecutive year that it’s happened.

Maybe it’s time to get back to what happened on Thursday night. Every time the Stars even put up a hint of retaliation, the Oilers found a way. After McDavid scored that breakaway to make it a two-goal game again, Dallas and the American Airlines Center came alive when Robertson put his second puck of the game into the back of the net under a minute into the third period. It was 4-3, and the Stars once again had life.

Until they didn’t. Just a couple of minutes later, Evander Kane threw a centering pass right in front of the net that took a bad bounce off Esa Lindell’s skate and past Casey DeSmith. Get a goal, give a goal. Definitely not what you want to be doing when your season is on the brink.

Sports can be continuous gut punches over and over again. That’s certainly what the last four games for the Stars were. Ever since Edmonton decided that they wanted to win this series, that’s what was going to happen. And that’s a shame, because this Stars roster definitely, at least on paper, seemed to have what it took to win the franchise’s first Cup since 1999.

Now, the hockey world shifts its attention away from the Stars. The Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers will face off in the Stanley Cup Final for the second consecutive year, with the Oilers looking to become the first Canadian franchise to win a Stanley Cup since the Montreal Canadiens did it in 1993. I’m sure that’ll be a blast to watch, with storylines galore and the best stars in the sport like McDavid and Matthew Tkachuk creating moments that we’ll all remember forever. I just wish that it was the Stars who were going to be there instead.

But as I said earlier, pondering the what-ifs will only cause damage to one’s mental psyche. It won’t stop me from doing it, though, as all I wanted was for this Stars team to get the job done. I’ll have to wait one more year for that to happen.