For the third time in as many years, the Stars are among the NHL’s final four, within eyeshot of the second Stanley Cup they’ve been chasing for 25 years. This time, they should win it.
I use “should” in both senses of the word. The first is obvious: I believe the Stars are the best hockey team remaining in these playoffs and, barring something unforeseen, will defeat everyone left standing in their path. I believe this because I, like everyone else who has been reading David Castillo, Sean Shapiro, and Robert Tiffin this season, understand just how well Jim Nill retrofitted a hockey team with a small handful of weaknesses into a juggernaut with none whatsoever, depending on how much consternation you have over what Dallas could do with another quality right-shot defenseman. Mikko Rantanen is the new king of Dallas. Jake Oettinger is the best goalie in America. Miro Heiskanen is the sort of dude who anchors a Cup winner’s blue line. For that matter, so is Thomas Harley.
The Stars will smother you with star power or devour you with depth. They will run you out of the building in a goal fest, and they will blink last in an overtime battle of nerves. Do not be misled by the end-of-season sandbagging or whatever packet of statistics was compiled before Rantanen (and fellow deadline imports Mikael Granlund and Cody Ceci) showed up. This team is an overdog, a bully. With respect to the universally adored Mavericks of 2011 and the there-in-a-flash Rangers of 2023, Dallas hasn’t seen a team overpower its way to a championship since these Stars did it all the way back in 1999. This should be the next one.
Which brings me to the second sense of that word. The Stars really should—as in ought to—win the Stanley Cup now, this year, because there will never be a better time for them to matter more than they already do.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the local sports landscape recently, what with it being my job and all. And I do not recall a moment quite like this one, when the two biggest properties in town have given people so little to believe in.
The Cowboys have been at this for years, but the jarringly lazy Brian Schottenheimer hire coupled with yet another Kevlar-safe offseason—at least until the George Pickens trade—should remove any lingering doubt about what this team is and what it prioritizes. I’ve written about it more than once lately, so I’ll spare you the rehash here. But whether you agree that the Cowboys are chasing profits far more than on-field success, or you’re still inclined to accept that the Joneses are just trying their best, 2026 will mark 29 years since the team made its last conference championship game, and there remains no significant change in approach. There is no reason, in other words, to expect the Cowboys will approach someplace better than where they have been.
Then there are the Mavericks, who [gestures wildly at the last three months]. While the Cooper Flagg miracle rescues the team from what would have been a self-induced march into irrelevance, this team remains a ways from recapturing all the goodwill it burned down. Flagg does make it far more plausible to believe Nico Harrison’s claim that the fanbase will return in full whenever the Mavericks get back to winning big. But the Mavs’ roster itself is now positioned somewhere akin to what it was in 2021, when a foundational centerpiece (Luka Doncic) had little in the way of a long-term supporting cast aligned around him. That led the Mavericks to seesaw from upstarts to also-rans and back again, only for Harrison to sever what was shaping up to be extended run among the league’s elite. Shifts that drastic, in both composition and emotion, take years to be undone.
These franchises have shared North Texas for 45 years. Just about all of those years have been marked by one or both either contending for a championship or delivering enough hope to presume that day was coming soon. For the foreseeable future, neither one is in that position.
So how jaded will fans get when the Cowboys continue to top out at perfectly acceptable and ultimately meaningless regular seasons, at the same time the Mavericks try to reorient themselves with Doncic starring in Los Angeles? And what opportunities will that create for every other property in the most robust sports business market in America?
To me, the latter question could be the biggest storyline in local sports over the next half decade. If ever there were a time for another team to grow its profile, to raise its standing in and around Dallas, it is now. That could mean the Rangers, who retain the bulk of their championship core, along with the return of Jacob deGrom and the ascension of Wyatt Langford. It could also mean the Wings, who already enjoy the bottom-line dividends of the Paige Bueckers era and perhaps will see a similar uptick in the standings by the time they start to play their games in the Convention Center next year.
But more than either of them, or anyone else, it’s the Stars. This is a team with a roster ready to fight for championships for the next five years or more, constructed by someone as beloved at his job as he is great at it. A team that seems to mint a new icon each playoff series, the most recent of which, Rantanen, arrived in the American Airlines Center one month after the Mavericks shipped Doncic out of it, when the local vibe was at a nadir. A team that, unlike its AAC co-tenant, has made zero known overtures about moving outside the city when their shared lease expires in 2031. (I am aware of the Mavericks’ position that they want to remain in Dallas. I also know the history of other teams proclaiming something similar, only to later wind up in the suburbs.)
Why can’t this be hockey’s moment to take another step up in prominence, now that the Stars have been in Dallas for more than 30 years and have been formidable for well over half of them? While that isn’t necessarily dependent on a Cup, a third straight conference finals letdown is bound to make Stars fans restless. That is no recipe for enticing anyone searching for a good time to join them, least of all anyone hoping to find rejuvenation in a different Dallas sports experience.
And so the Stars really should win—for the likes of Nill and Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin, but also for the outfit they play for. There is no time like the present to reclaim their status as the best team in hockey. And, closer to home, to mean more than they ever have.
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Mike Piellucci
Mike Piellucci
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Mike Piellucci is D Magazine's sports editor. He is a former staffer at The Athletic and VICE, and his freelance…