With the 2019-20 NHL season on hold we are going to take a look at where each NHL team stands at this moment with a series of posts examining their season. Have they met expectations? Exceeded expectations? Who has been the surprise? All of that and more. Today we look at the Dallas Stars.
Dallas Stars
Record: 37-24-8 (69 games), third in the Central Division
Leading Scorer: Tyler Seguin 50 points (17 goals and 33 assists)
In-Season Roster Moves
• Acquired Oula Palve from the Pittsburgh Penguins for John Nyberg.
• Traded Emil Djuse to the Florida Panthers for a 2020 sixth-round pick.
Season Overview:
The Stars have gone from being a team with a lot of firepower to being a talented team that takes care of their defense first. That started happening when they hired Jim Montgomery as their head coach and it’s continued under interim bench boss Rick Bowness.
So, yeah, it’s a little shocking to see Seguin, their leading scorer, with 50 points in 69 games, but this is what the Stars have become. Their roster was always a little top-heavy. Now, their scoring is a little more spread out.
After Seguin’s 50 points, there’s no other player on the team over the 40-point mark. Captain Jamie Benn is second on the team in scoring with 39 points. Behind him is defenseman Miro Heiskanen (35 points) and Alexander Radulov (34 points).
As for their season as a whole, it’s been a strange one.
The Stars opened up the 2019-20 campaign by losing their first three games and eight of their first nine. But they went on to win seven of their next eight games to put themselves back on track. After losing in OT to Winnipeg on Nov. 10, Dallas went on to win seven games in a row.
“We’ve really matured throughout the year,” Montgomery said at the time. “This win streak and this run we’ve been on, we don’t want to get too excited and pat ourselves on the back because we’ve got to continue to get better. There are certain parts of our game that need to be better, but there is a lot of confidence on the bench and a lot of different people stepping up and saying the right things. They’re pushing each other, which is nice to see.”
Unfortunately for Montgomery, he was fired in early December to “unprofessional conduct. That’s when Bowness took over behind the bench.
Leading up to the NHL’s decision to pause the season, the Stars were struggling. They had dropped six games in a row (0-4-2). They were still sitting in third place in the Central Division, but Winnipeg (two points back) and Nashville (four points back) were quickly closing the gap.
Would the Stars have gotten back on track? We’ll never know. But what we do know is that seven of their next 10 scheduled games would’ve been played on home ice (they’re 19-12-3 at home this season).
Highlight of the Season:
As we alluded to before, the Stars managed to tie a franchise record with a seven-game winning streak between Nov. 13 and Nov. 25. They won in Calgary, in Vancouver and in Edmonton, and they followed that up by beating Vancouver, Winnipeg, Chicago and Vegas at American Airlines Center. They also went 12 games between regulation losses
The Stars have won seven games in a row four different times. The previous time occurred back in 2008.
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Joey Alfieri is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @joeyalfieri.