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Stomach for the fight or flightThe good news: They were never expected to compete. Most had them near the bottom of the Western Conference. Those weren't totally bad predictions.
The Stars ended up 10th in the conference with 89 points. Considering the last week of the season, what was once a photo finish for the final playoff spots and the Pacific Division looks more like a clear-cut decision. Phoenix took the Pacific with 97 points. Eighth-seed Los Angeles had 95 points. The San Jose Sharks pulled an anti-Stars and won four straight, including beating the Stars and Kings twice each.
On most ordinarily bad teams, you can find multiple points of contention as to why they weren't better. Most of the analysis is vague and unconvincing one way or the other. Whereas the Dallas Cowboys finished 8-8 and narrowly out of the playoffs, there are probably five or six areas in which they need to improve. They also signed a handful of free agents this off season to address those areas.
The Stars are different. The goaltending and offense were good. The defense and penalty kill were good enough. They won't need to go into the off-season making wholesale changes unless they could find definite upgrades with new ownership spending money or a trade that might drop into their lap. Generally, the Stars will be relatively the same in 2012-13. Just older, wiser.
Two things killed the Dallas Stars: Power play and overtime.
The Stars finished tied for last in the NHL in power play conversion at 13.5 percent (ironically, they tied with Pacific-leading Phoenix). Consider the amount of talent offensively, this is pretty dumb. The Stars should be able to put together two pretty sharp power-play lines with talent left over. And, more so, there's zero reason as to why Jamie Benn shouldn't be getting the bulk of the minutes with a man advantage. In the final five games (all losses), the Stars managed just six goals. They went 0-13 on the power play.
As for overtime, it's a numbers game, pure and simple. With the current point situation in the NHL, if you lose in overtime or the shootout, you get a point.
The Stars went 4-1-7-4 (overtime wins, overtime losses, shootout wins, shootout losses), which totals 27 points.
The Pacific Division foes:
Phoenix
3-3-6-10= 31 points
San Jose
3-5-9-5= 34 points
Los Angeles
3-6-6-9= 33 points
There's your playoff spot. The Coyotes, Sharks and Kings forced more overtime games eking out points here and there, maybe on nights when they didn't deserve any.
I go back to the Phoenix-Dallas game March 20 at the American Airlines Center. The Stars outplayed the Coyotes for about 50 minutes of game time and took a 3-1 lead into the final period. Two mistakes later and it's 3-3 going into overtime. The Stars won in a shootout and got their two points.
However, it was the pesky Coyotes, who managed to get a point despite not really deserving it. It's about playing every minutes and every period like it was for the playoffs. Those three teams managed that. The Stars didn't.
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