Better luck next year: Dallas Stars keep getting close, but can not break through

This is going to be a fascinating offseason for one of the NHL's best teams that just keeps coming up short.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs: The Dallas Stars.

The Dallas Stars keep knocking on the door but are unable to actually kick the damn thing down.

Since the start of the 2018-19 season no team in the NHL has appeared in (103), or won (54), more playoff games than them.

During that time they have won 10 playoff series, appeared in four Western Conference Finals and a Stanley Cup Final.

All of that is wonderful.

The bad news is they are the only team in the top-five in playoff wins during that time that has not actually lifted the Stanley Cup at least one time in any of those seasons.

The 2024-25 season was another so close, yet so far finish as they were again eliminated in the Western Conference Final, losing in five games to the Edmonton Oilers (for the second year in a row).

When you look at the roster, there’s a ton to like. They have a great mix of established, high-end veterans, in-their-prime stars and another wave of young players that are just starting to reach their prime. They have an aggressive front office that went all-in at this year’s trade deadline and there are probably 27 or 28 fan bases around the NHL that would happily trade places with them over the past few seasons.

It’s a good team.

An objectively good team and a really good, well-run organization.

Despite all of that, and despite the recent success with consistently deep playoff runs, they still seem to be an organization that is currently stuck in some chaos as it enters an absolutely fascinating offseason.

That offseason already started shortly after their series loss to Edmonton when they fired head coach Peter DeBoer. It was a move that had to happen.

While DeBoer has an outstanding track record as a head coach — reaching the Conference Finals with four different teams and the Stanley Cup Final with two different teams — he has some pretty significant self-destructive tendencies, especially as it relates to his goalies and some of his decision-making. That floated to the surface again this postseason when he benched his franchise goalie (Jake Oettinger) in an elimination game, and then threw him under the bus in his post-game press conference. And that wasn’t his only eye-opening comment in the wake of that defeat. He also argued that he wasn’t sure if this Stars team — the one that traded for Mikko Rantanen at the trade deadline — was the best Stars team of the past few seasons.

Maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe it was missing something.

But even if that was the case, that’s not really a statement you can make at that point — especially when paired with his comments on Oettinger’s performance — when you are the head coach of a team.

The head coach of a team that went ALL-IN at the trade deadline and seemingly gave you everything you could have possibly asked for.

It’s all just shifting blame away from himself and on to everybody else.

It’s not MY fault we lost … my goalie can’t beat Edmonton.

It’s not MY fault we couldn’t get through to the Stanley Cup Final … the team isn’t as good as the previous teams that couldn’t do it.

There has to be some accountability when you’re a head coach, and DeBoer showed no willingness to accept any.

How do you let that head coach walk back into that locker room next season? You can’t. You don’t. And Dallas isn’t.

General manager Jim Nill said DeBoer’s post-game comments were not the only reason for the change, but they were certainly a component of it. If nothing else they seemed to just be the final straw.

It’s a complex situation because for all of his flaws, DeBoer is a really good coach, and finding an upgrade on him is going to be a difficult task. Especially at this point in the hiring cycle. But it still had to be done.

It also might not be the only significant change the Stars are looking at this offseason. They just need to be careful about what is next.

Let’s talk about it.