On paper, the Stars’ current situation isn’t too encouraging.
Dallas dropped Game 1 against the Colorado Avalanche by a 5-1 margin Saturday night at home, forfeiting their home-ice advantage for the round.
It was their largest margin in a playoff loss since the 2023 Western Conference finals. They were almost shut out by a goalie who had never played in a playoff game.
And, the loss marked their eighth straight loss and their eighth consecutive Game 1 loss, a streak that now spans four playoff runs.
Get the latest D-FW sports news, analysis, scores and more.
Not to mention, the Stars were without their two best players. Neither Jason Robertson, nor Miro Heiskanen, is expected to be ready for Monday’s Game 2.
None of those facts breed confidence for the Stars, who could very well follow up back-to-back conference finals runs with a first-round exit. But despite the final score, Saturday’s game left the Stars feeling somewhat encouraged, knowing, as they thought, this series may not be a blowout in the way pundits across the league are predicting.
“I thought we played maybe our best game in a month or two tonight,” Stars defenseman Thomas Harley said postgame. “Obviously, losing Game 1 is something we’re getting used to. It’s not an enjoyable feeling, but we’ve been here before.”
The Stars are in quite familiar territory. While it’s becoming a streak they don’t want to extend, it hasn’t been all that detrimental to them in their first two playoff runs under Pete DeBoer. In the DeBoer era, the Stars are 4-2 in series when they’ve lost Game 1. One of those four wins even came when they started a series down 2-0.
Another was also against Colorado in the second round last year, when the Stars won the next three games, including two in Denver, after dropping Game 1. They won in six.
“We know we’re able to come back from it,” forward Wyatt Johnston said. “Playoff time, you’re gonna lose games, you’re gonna win games. The most important game is the next game.”
But Saturday isn’t a game the Stars want to completely put behind them. Much was made of whether Dallas could flip the switch after losing its last seven games of the regular season — while playing far from its best during. Even though they lost, and even though the score didn’t reflect a close game, the Stars played pretty close to the game they wanted. They showed major strides from Game 82 in Nashville or the six before that.
Dallas was in a neck-and-neck battle for the first half. Two fluky goals gave Colorado a lead, but Dallas made it a 2-1 game with just over 13 minutes left. Avalanche goalie Mackenzie Blackwood made countless saves to prevent the equalizer, and a flurry of Colorado goals in the last few minutes made the final score what it was.
The Stars were solid defensively. Goalie Jake Oettinger looked like his playoff self.
Dallas just needed to do a better job of finishing and staying out of the box — including avoiding a 5-on-3 early in the game and a double minor in the second period. If it had corrected those two areas, the Stars’ Game 1 streak easily could’ve come to an end.
“I thought it was a pretty even game,” Harley said. “I thought we outplayed them for portions of it. Their goalie played well, but we’ve got to find a way to put a couple more past him.”
No one is picking Dallas to win this series. Why would they?
The Stars are without Heiskanen and Robertson for possibly the entire series. Colorado is on the verge of getting captain Gabriel Landeskog back for the first time in three years. The Stars fell apart down the stretch of the season. The Avalanche are deeper than they were last year. Colorado has one of the best players in the world in Nathan MacKinnon. And the one clear advantage Dallas had in net wasn’t much of one at all Saturday.
But the Stars showed in Game 1 that, even without their healthy lineup and as heavy underdogs, this series shouldn’t be a breeze for the Avalanche. Even they needed a few lucky bounces to go their way.
Dallas is not the same team that took the ice just Wednesday. It bore more resemblance to the one that played until June last year.
There’s work to be done in the Stars’ 48-hour turnaround before Game 2, and they’ll need to win a few in a row to regain control of the series, but this series is far from over. And Dallas’ best game is still to come.
“That game’s a quarter of an inch from being tied 2-2 in the third period,” DeBoer said. “We’ve got to build on that. We’ve got to work for some more bounces around the net. We’ve got to stay out of the penalty box. And we’ve got to build on a lot of the good things that we did tonight.”
Find more Stars coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
