How it ended
Earlier this week, we talked a whole ding-danged lot about the construction of this Stars team, and what makes it both intimidating and vulnerable at the same time. But now that opening night is finally here, you are quickly going to find yourself doing less of the clinical breaking-down, and a lot more of the wishin’ and hopin’.
That hope, for most fans, is inherently linked not just to the name of the team, but the Names that it’s composed of. Sure, some folks out there might just root for laundry, but for every Seinfeld in the crowd, there are ten more people who remember a Miro Heiskanen Moment from last year and can’t wait to see another. People become Dallas Stars fans in a variety of ways, but the ones who stick around tend to share a deep love of the players on that team in common.
Like most loves, that fandom is a mixture of pride and dread, the hope that kills you. As this roster begins another season tonight, you will surely find yourself thinking back to moments of joy and heartbreak alike, and that’s where Tyler Seguin’s return sits right at the top of the list. His time in Dallas has paralleled Jim Nill’s, and that means so many of their joys and disappointments have been joint ones. From a cut Achilles tendon before a promising playoff run a decade ago, to a hip surgery soon after returning from Finland, and everything else along the way.
Seguin has said candidly this fall that he’s grown tired of talking about what injury he’s had to overcome this time, and how this recovery required fortitude, and so on and so forth. He just wants to get out there and play, because he knows better than most just how quickly one moment of joy can make up for all those months of grueling, thankless work.
This year, Tyler Seguin’s victories will be everyone’s, because his misfortune has been shared by the same fans who have basked in the 13 years of Stars renewed that his arrival brought with it. He is back, and so are the Stars. The beautiful thing about a new season is that every single one really can end differently.
Jamie Benn, too, is looking for another moment. From the sounds of it, he did some genuine soul-searching before deciding to come back for another season, but he ultimately said Yes to Season 18 because there is nothing like climbing that mountain. Every goal, every hit, and every heartbreak in the spring of playoff hockey serve to make up the fabric of legend.
Jamie Benn has been to all of the Dallas Stars Hall of Fame events for the past five years, and he has seen how beloved former players like Derian Hatcher, Ed Belfour, Joe Nieuwendyk, and Brenden Morrow have come to mean the world to this city. If you can deliver a Stanley Cup, nobody will ever say you fell short again, because you didn’t, that time.
“Did you win a Cup?” is a ridiculously high standard for anyone to be judged by, but the loftiness of the standard is kind of the point, and Benn knows that. This year, he opted to give himself and his team one more chance to pump their collective fists in jubilation, together.
Something you might not know about that Benn goal up there is that it was the first goal Benn scored in a playoff win since the first round against Minnesota back in 2016. For a span of over four years, any time Benn would score a playoff goal, the Stars would also lose the playoff game. It was hardly his fault—scoring a goal is literally the best thing a skater can do—but breaking that hard-luck run required him to plow into the crossbar. Benn willingly made the sacrifice.
So very many Stars fans have grown up with Benn and Seguin, with Jamie and Tyler. Their chemistry symbolized the resurrection of pride in this franchise after a dark period, and they have given this fanbase innumerable moments of absolute joy—many of them coming despite getting put on blast by the very organization that pays them. They have seen it all, and they have kept coming back in order to win it all. Maybe this could be the year.
Benn and Seguin are also in the same age range as players like Mike Modano and Jere Lehtinen were in 2008, and Stars fans remember well just how quickly a longstanding playoff contender wound up having its very last ride. Those two players know better than anyone that nothing gold can stay, but that doesn’t mean they won’t give everything they’ve got while to do something that people will remember for decades.
Along with those two, you have veterans like Tyler Myers and Matt Duchene, two other 35+ guys who were the toast of the town in their younger days, but who are now well into the back-nine of their careers, still hoping to lift a Cup before they finish the 18th hole. Both of them came to Dallas after long stints in multiple other cities, and both of them believe that this could be the place that finally sees them get the job done. All of these men are also fathers, which means they know time is the very opposite of infinite. Age is only a number, but it does go up by one every year.
Casey DeSmith is also 35 years old. He just signed a new contract, to stay here at least until he’s Jamie Benn’s age, but he’s been around long enough to know that goalies are only as dependable as their most recent save. You are either doing your job satisfactorily, or you’ve failed. It is no coincidence, I think, that he and Jake Oettinger have become such good friends. Something about that position galvanizes goalies, and I think it just might be the blinking red light that says “YOU MESSED UP” that goes off each time a puck slips by. If you can handle that, you can handle a lot.
Jake Oettinger has absolutely everything to prove this year, and maybe that makes him the perfect goalie for this team, where so many of his teammates are also looking to rewrite narratives, even the unfair ones. Goalie are held to an impossible standard, and they know that from the moment they put on the pads for the second time. He signed up for this, and he isn’t any happier with last season’s final outcome than the average Stars fan was.
Colin Blackwell won a bronze medal with Oettinger and Jason Robertson at 2021 Worlds, but even glory like that can’t drown out the frustration that must come from falling victim to a salary cap roster crunch. This is a player who delivered one of the most memorable goals of the last decade for this team, but he is surely one of the most motivated to prove, like Oettinger, that he has more to give, if only he’s given the chance to do so.
As you think of these veterans, you can see the dilemma for Glen Gulutzan and Jim Nill. You have all these guys who have done all these incredible things, but you have to make choices every summer, every trade deadline, and every gameday about whom you’re going to trust, and where you’re going to put them. A choice in favor of one player usually means excluding another, and it’s unlikely that everyone is happy with every choice. There is no place with more second-guessing than the aftermath of a big loss, but that’s what these people sign up for. Glen Gulutzan saw his team put up 112 points despite being decimated by injuries, but he knew from the first day on the job that the Stars his old Oilers had knocked out of the West final twice in a row couldn’t keep getting that deep in the playoffs forever, and the bill finally came due in the first round.
If you want those moments of joy, then you have to be willing to have your heart ripped out over and over and over again. I don’t think the sounds that this team heard in the final seconds of Game 6 in Minnesota will leave their memories any time soon.
Memories are peppered throughout the rest of the roster, too. Jason Robertson has nine goals in his last nine playoff games, but don’t think for a moment that he isn’t fully aware of those who have doubted his abilities in the big moments, from Bill Guerin on down the list. The Contract will be The Contract until it finally gets resolved, but few players seem more capable of blocking out the noise and continuing to score goals like him.
Mikko Rantanen went through an eerily similar situation to Robertson just two years ago in Colorado, and that club decided to pull the rip cord in January rather than meet his asking price (or even to continue discussing it). The Stars benefited as a result, and they now have one of the most elite playoff scorers in the NHL on their roster for what is looking like more of a bargain every day.
After gutting his way through the Minnesota series on one knee (while still piling up points), Rantanen showed last week just how brightly the competitive fire still burns, whether it’s the preseason, the Olympics, or Game 7 against so many of those old Avalanche teammates.
Ratnanen has a ring with his old team, just like Seguin did before Boston summarily sent him out of town. I don’t believe for a second that winning a Cup before Colorado or Boston gets another isn’t something that has occurred to Rantanen and Seguin alike. Every superstar that gets traded carries a familiar athletic grudge, wanting to prove that his former club made a mistake by giving up on him. Rantanen has proven that once in the most impossibly dramatic fashion, but the hunger doesn’t appear to have abated. He wants more. Probably, like most athletes, he wants it all.
A cool twist to this season is that Joel Kiviranta—Mr. Game 7 from 2020—is back in the Stars fold as well. And like Rantanen, he comes fresh from Colorado, who decided to move on in favor of different depth pieces. Kiviranta is sneaky-funny, but his hat trick came in one one of the most distressing years of this generation, when even going over to a friend’s house to share a meal was something that required serious calculation of risk. Now, the only calculation Kiviranta will be making is counting down the days until his next game against Colorado.
Miro Heiskanen and Esa Lindell have been playing together in Dallas for nearly a decade now, and they’ve seen it all in their time, including these three bullet points:
The disastrous 2019-20 start that nearly got a lot of people fired only to end in that 2020 bubble run to the Cup Final
A 2022 Wild Card team that came within one goal of beating the best team in the West
One Western Conference Final run collapsing in ignominy after Jamie Benn’s penalty on Mark Stone, and another one ending in a soon-to-be fired coach who ultimately pointed the finger at his goalie.
You might not realize it, but Lindell has been around since the third year of Benn & Seguin’s dual dominance (as has another player). Esa Lindell made his debut in the salad days of the 2015-16 season, which means he has had all the same coaches Tyler Seguin has had. And that means he’s seen every type of way for the Stars to excel and to stumble. Perhaps it’s no surprise that he’s so even-keeled—he’s seen so very much in his NHL time.
Miro Heiskanen has been everything you could possibly have wanted from a franchise defenseman drafted third overall, but you also can’t deny the fact that the defenseman drafted one spot after him has collected a few more trophies than he has, including the biggest one of all. Heiskanen is not one to voice his personal feelings too often, but elite athletes tend to have long memories, and Stars fans would love nothing more than to see Heiskanen finally have a year where he unequivocally eclipses his Colorado counterpart.
Oh, and if you doubt the drive underneath the surface, just remember that Heiskanen saw his team get eliminated by the same Wild team whose fourth-liners laid hits on him that tore an oblique muscle late in the season. You might not hear it in his voice, but I suspect that playoff elimination sat as badly as any of them for Heiskanen this summer.
Thomas Harley and Wyatt Johnston are still ridiculously young by NHL standards, but they’ve only needed a few years in which to set expectations sky-high. Harley already has international accolades along with some huge goals for Dallas, but there’s one goal Harley scored (which came off the tape of Tyler Seguin’s stick) that shines particularly brightly:
Those moments, man. Harley’s goal wasn’t just an overtime series winner, but also the capstone on the incredible work he did in Heiskanen’s absence for half the season and almost all of the playoffs up to that point. The team lost its number-one defenseman, and the kid stepped up and gave them another, night after night. Coming as this goal did only a year or two after Harley’s defensive rejuvenation down with Neil Graham in the AHL, you felt like the sky was the limit going into last year.
That’s what made Harley’s 2025-26 season so disappointing to many fans. Injuries and uneven play early in the season were only magnified by his signing a lucrative long-term contract (which, like Rantanen’s suddenly looks eminently reasonable in light of a shifted NHL landscape). His play got back nearer to Harley’s standards as the year went on, but given the way the season ended in Dallas, Harley will be right in the thick of players wanting more from this go-round.
Johnston, meanwhile, is the only one of the young triumvirate of forwards left in Dallas. He’s also shown himself to be the best of them, but he saw Logan Stankoven win a Stanley Cup just like everyone else did last spring. Being 23 years old doesn’t exempt you from some healthy jealousy.
Justin Hryckowian is two years older than Johnston, but he only needed one rookie season to capture the hearts of this city (and the ire of another). He’s a little bit Antoine Roussel, complete with the French fluency. His skills are underrated, but his willingness to step up against anyone is well-documented by this point. He has found himself playing opposite Mikko Rantanen and alongside Johnston, and he will get every opportunity to prove he deserves to stay there.
The youngest member of this team is Lian Bichsel, and he is also its most ferocious. There are not many hockey players who can make a 6-foot-4, 220-lb player like Jack McBain look helpless, but Bichsel did exactly that.
His youthful exuberance is laced with absolute rocket fuel, and it’s tantalizing to consider what he could wind up becoming on a team whose only Stanley Cup-winning captain to this point was Derian Hatcher. Switzerland and the USA could wind up having a little more in common five or ten years from now.
What else can we say about this club? Radek Faksa established himself during Lindell’s cameo year in that 2015-16 playoff run, and while the goal-scoring has dipped from his younger years, Faksa’s goal in the preseason reminded us of more than one massive playoff goal in his past, including the one that gave Pete DeBoer some sweet vengeance of his own a couple years back against the Vegas team that sacked him.
This game is so much more than just the goals, though. Something like 80% of it is just mucking along the boards, fighting with other elite athletes for control of the puck. When you put so much of your energy into those thankless moments, you deserve the spotlight every now and then. And for a returning first-round pick like Faksa, every moment of glory he gets is more than merited.
Sam Steel and Oskar Bäck aren’t known for their goal-scoring, but they are always among the first people asked to go out and block shots on the penalty kill. Bäck had to have his entire jaw reconstructed before he even made his NHL debut, so he’s proven his love of the game many times over already. That level of commitment doesn’t always make for high entertainment value, but it does mean these players deserve their own moments of glory, too.
Kyle Capobianco will play whenever the Stars need him, and I will refer you back to this piece if you need a refresher. He’s an easy guy to root for, and the Stars brought him back for good reason. At some point this year, he is going to do something impressive that makes the person sitting next to you say, “Why isn’t he playing every game?”
We would be remiss to forget three other players who are coming off injuries of their own, starting with Roope Hintz, who had his hamstring torn in two places last year in a tussle with Nathan “Regular Guy” MacKinnon. It was the second time Hintz was hurt at the hands of MacKinnon over the past few years, and he wasn’t able to heal from this one in time for the playoffs. Minnesota likely couldn’t have been happier not to have to deal with him, considering how Hintz terrorized them three years before that.
Hintz is that fascinating player who is not quite an elite 1C in terms of his numbers and consistency, but he clearly has the tools to do elite 1C work on any given night. Like Robertson, you can forget just how massive a player he is right up until he’s bearing down on a helpless goalie at full speed. Having him back in the lineup makes everything and everyone better, and you just get the feeling that he’s right on the cusp of the sort of season and postseason where everything comes together, so long as his body doesn’t get hacked to pieces again. He is also about to turn 30, so he knows the chances don’t keep coming forever.
Nils Lundkvist is the affable defenseman who is 26 years old. Himself a first-round pick that New York traded away, Lundkvist has reimagined his game to build more trust with his coaches, and it appears to have been paid off. If he can avoid another freak injury, he could be one of the most underrated stories of the Stars’ roster. If things keep trending positively, Lundkvist will become the Brightest Timeline version of Julius Honka’s missteps and mistakes. The talent and the wisdom are growing in tandem with one another, and it is wonderful to see.
Oh, and by the way, that accidental injury to Lundkvist last spring was the second time Michael McCarron caused a Stars player to miss playoff games in as many seasons. One suspects Justin Hyrckowian earned a few bonus points in the room for dropping the gloves with McCarron alongside Jamie Benn last week.
The last player emerging from the summer infirmary is Arttu Hyry, the undrafted free agent who comes with the Jere Lehtinen Seal of Approval. Not only is Hyry an elite faceoff specialist, but he also acquitted himself well last spring as a third-line rookie center. The Stars’ depleted center depth needed help, and Hyry channeled his best impression of 2016 Radek Faksa in doing so—right up until Ryan Hartman slew-footed him and took him out of the series.
(Hartman, by the way, opted not to fight Hryckowian last week. Interesting, that.)
There is unfinished business all over this roster. The Stars are not the Panthers, who laid waste to the Eastern Conference over and over until they finally ran out of bodies last season. They are also not Vegas, who assembled a mercenary force that could rival the Hessians of 250 years ago en route to running Dallas out of town on their way to a championship in 2023.
Instead, these Stars are a group of players old and young, some with more scars than others, but all them feeling definitively like they belong to this team. Rantanen and Seguin have won it all elsewhere, but doing so in Dallas would doubtless mean much more.
Time is short for athletes, even those lucky enough to have long NHL careers. As Ben Folds wrote, seconds pass slowly, but years go flying by.
For fans, it’s a bit different, because all the players from all the eras occupy the same overlapping parts of their hearts and memories. Hope and despair are intertwined, but always there lurks the promise that if this could be the year, everything will have been worth it. These players might be the ones who finally deliver another Moment for this team, and this city, and these fans. Genuinely, this group could wind up as heroes, and that’s something not all fanbases can say with sincerity at this time of year.
These Stars players mean something to thousands upon thousands of people in Dallas and elsewhere. The cost of caring is the willingness to be hurt, and you probably will not see them go 84-0-0 before the playoffs, let along 16-0 in them. But if we get just another handful of those moments, a few more of those highlights you can replay in crisp detail for years to come, then nobody will say it hasn’t been worth the journey. The price of loving hockey is handing over your sports fan heart, not knowing what shape it’s going to be in when you get it back. All you really know for sure is that every year around this time, you keep signing up for it again. Thank goodness for that.