Teams that get as far as Dallas has are not soft. It's the analysis that is.
Let's "fight" over a debate.
As with all great athletes and great teams who excel above all others, there is always more to notice. More to pay attention to. More to miss. And more to create narratives around.
Take the Florida Panthers, for example: what do you notice? Probably a lot more than your average team. Their forecheck is designed to punish defensemen on retrievals, taking away the strong side reversal, and the weakside rim along the wall. They do this with some of the most talented two-way forwards in the game, with Selke nominees Aleksander Barkov and Sam Reinhart leading the way. This gold belt brew is assisted by a mobile blueline who play all-in on the offensive zone pressure designed by one of the game’s better tacticians in Paul Maurice.
In other words, the last thing you should notice…is the nastiness. Consider athletes like Naseem Hamed, Muhammed Ali, Roy Jones Jr, and James Toney. Great boxers. Does anyone think they won because they were…wait for it…nasty trash talkers? Or was it just a little extra to the sweet science of what made them great? That’s the Florida difference. They have talented players running the game’s most effective forecheck. They also just happen to have some players who will cross a line the NHL is not willing to enforce.
I mention Florida because I think this is how people view Dallas. In conjunction with the defending Cup champs, the Stars must be the opposite after what happened with the Darnell Nurse slash on Roope Hintz. Dallas didn’t “play for each other.” They didn’t mug anyone in response1. Florida, hard. Dallas, soft. The Stars just can’t compete in a Panther world, right? And yet the Stars have been in the same amount of Conference Finals as Florida has in the past three years. Does it matter how many times Dallas goes to the Conference Finals if they never win a Cup? I suppose I’ll grant you that. But here’s the real question: what will it take to get over the hump?
Let’s check my generic list against your generic list:
Better depth defensemen; specifically, defenders who can move the puck up ice
Better forwards to pair with Wyatt Johnston
More speed on the wings
An ability to draw more penalties
Better playoff health (inasmuch as anyone is ever 100 percent)
Punch Evan Bouchard in the mouth
Drop the gloves with Darnell Nurse
Were the last two high up on your list? Probably not.
To be clear from the outset, none of this is to say that I think Dallas should have just looked the other way when Nurse slashed Hintz; or when Evan Bouchard tapped him on the foot (ankle?). I was totally fine with Mason Marchment going after Ian Cole when he caught Matt Duchene along the boards. But whatever your opinions are of that sequence, the ESPN broadcast explained this very clearly: not reacting to the slash was an explicit mandate by Pete DeBoer. So whatever issues you have about how the Stars handled the situation, they belong to DeBoer and really no one else.
When I made this point on Twitter, I nearly got ratioed. Obviously, that’s not a big deal. I routinely disagree with Stars fans, Stars writers, Stars podcasters, and hell — the Stars themselves. So help me understand, disagreers. What is meant by softness anyway? Dallas is soft because their players didn’t feed off their emotions and get carried away trying to play prizefighter rather than hockey player? Dallas is soft because somebody didn’t drop the gloves with Nurse and Bouchard? Jamie Benn got his pound of flesh in 2023 on Mark Stone. Was that a “hard” move? What did that get them? More to the point, what if the NHL does its job and gives Edmonton a major for the slash, and a one-game suspension to Nurse? If the Oilers lose that game, isn’t the talking point how Nurse was foolish?
How many of those calling Dallas players “soft” watched Tampa Bay versus Florida? The Lightning were more than happy to fight for that knife in the mud2. Tampa also lost in five. Does that make the Lightning soft or hard? Do people think the Stars actually quit or suddenly gave up a lifelong dream to win a Stanley Cup because they didn’t get…revenge on a slash? Or is this discussion irrelevant, and nothing more than a cheap talking point to distract from who the better team was?
I get that there is a separate, more diplomatic argument underlying this point; namely that Dallas needed to ‘make life difficult’ for their opponents. But how do you do that? By being an effective boxer, or by being an effective hockey player? The Stars were outshot (attempts) 57-63 per game this postseason3. It’s impossible to dictate the rules of engagement if you’re never in control. Conversely, Florida’s per game shot differential this postseason is 63-55. What are the chances Matthew Tkachuk takes retribution for the Hagel hit on Barkov if Florida was down in that series instead of up by two? And who on Dallas — who that makes an impact on the scoresheet — is capable of laying out a player like that to begin with? Wyatt Johnston and Miro Heiskanen are two of Dallas’ best players that opponents see most often. Are they supposed to get some reps with Shane Churla to learn the art of acrimony? Or should they get tougher by bringing in yet another defective right-shot defender like Jacob Trouba?
There will be plenty of time to dissect the hockey portion of this discussion. And yes, I will talk about Pete DeBoer.
But here’s something else this “not hard enough” line misses: the discussion about soft and hard (phrasing!) ignores something important. Dallas played the hard way too often. It was precisely their resilience that made them lacking. The Stars won four games when trailing by one, and two games trailing by two or more. Sounds like a team that goes hard. The only team to win more? Edmonton. The team behind them? Florida. Dallas isn’t Toronto. For years Toronto thought they needed to be tougher, and brought in plugs like Ryan Reaves4, when in reality they simply needed to get better. The Stars, conversely, are much closer to contention. But they’ll get closer to it the more they focus on the hockey reasons for why they lost instead of the non-hockey reasons for why they couldn’t do that extra.
Resilience is toughness. Dallas was that, through and through. But in that end, that’s all they were. Without a mobile blueline, or depth scoring (Edmonton had nine even-strength goal scorers in this series to Dallas’ two), all they could do was dig their way out only to find themselves in different foxholes.
Hockey is still just hockey. Save the vengeance for Batman.
This seems to forget that Connor Brown and Zach Hymen were all injured on aggro Dallas plays.
Brandon Hagel’s hit on Barkov sure sent a message didn’t it!
Per 60, at even-strength.
Who is still on Toronto’s books (yet never on the ice) until 2026 for $1.3 million.
In my opinion the "softness" was a feeling that Dallas let Edmonton run all over them and do whatever they wanted without using their body to physically stop them. They seemed timid and unconfident often.
Maybe that's simply because Edmonton was a better more complete team and Dallas couldn't keep up speed wise or scheme wise. None of that would have mattered if Dallas scores on half of their prime chances in games 2 and 3. PDB got out coached in the WCF again.
I'm not sure the Hyman play was aggro by Mush. Yes Mush has a reputation for making a greasy hit but that hit really seemed so benign. I was shocked finding out it required surgery and he'd be out. It must have been a pretty serious injury.
Great read. Nails the real issues Dallas has to tend to in order to get to the next step. What happens this summer is going to be interesting.