Better luck next year: The Dallas Stars are so close

But there is a fine line between really good and great.

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 officially eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Dallas Stars.

I was very bullish on the Dallas Stars from the start of the 2023-24 season and they were consistently my pick to not only come out of the Western Conference, but to actually win the Stanley Cup.

There was just a lot to like about their roster and style of play.

They have top-line players in Jason Robertson, Miro Heiskanen and Jake Oettinger. They have a nice pipeline of young talent still coming through the system like Wyatt Johnston, Logan Stankoven and Thomas Harley. They also had what might have been the deepest roster in the league — especially at forward — after adding players like Matt Duchene last offseason.

There was not really a weakness anywhere on the roster, and they played like it through the regular season.

They were the top seed in the Western Conference, won the second most games in franchise history (52, just one short of their franchise record of 53 games) and had all of the underlying numbers to back it up.

The process was there, and so were the results. They did all of that despite Oettinger having a down year and only playing at a league average level for most of the season.

They ended up falling just short in the Western Conference Final, losing in six games to the Edmonton Oilers.

And I’m not even sure it was the result of them necessarily doing anything wrong. They played well throughout the playoffs and actually ran a gauntlet in the first two rounds that saw them have to beat the past two Stanley Cup winners (Vegas and Colorado) and two of the best rosters in the league this season. They just did not have any sort of an answer for Edmonton’s superstars and its power play, while their own offense went cold over the final three games of the series.

Did they just simply run out of steam after a grueling postseason? Or is there something else that held them back?

Let’s talk about it.