Although it was a different opponent Jamie Benn and his Dallas Stars faced in their second consecutive Western Conference Final, the result was the same. Just as it was in 2023, the Stars came two wins short of advancing to the Stanley Cup Final after losing 2-1 to the Edmonton Oilers in Game 6 at Rogers Place on Sunday night.
And with that, it's curtains on another terrific but too short season in Texas. The Stars finished first in the West in the regular-season — just one point behind the President's Trophy winning New York Rangers — but were unable to secure the conference crown in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
That was despite the Stars playing some of their best hockey of the series, outshooting the Oilers 35-10 but being unable to find a way to get more than one goal past Stuart Skinner.
“You could probably argue that was our best game of the series,” Benn admitted afterwards, per ESPN's Ryan S. Clark. “It just didn't go our way.”
The Oilers made the Stars pay for two penalties in the first period; Connor McDavid scored a highlight reel goal on the powerplay to open the scoring before setting up Zach Hyman later in the frame on the man advantage.
And that's all it would take for the Oilers, who advanced to their first Stanley Cup Final since 2006 in front of the home crowd. For the Stars, it's a devastating result, especially as they were clearly the better team on the road in Game 6.
Besides outshooting their opponents over three-to-one, the Stars also owned the puck for a ridiculous 75 percent of the contest, per Clark. Dallas was able to overcome a 3-2 series against the Vegas Golden Knights in Round 1, but it wasn't to be against McDavid and the Oil this time around.
Stars fall short of Lord Stanley again in 2024
“We went through a gauntlet and beat some really good teams and knew we had something special,” said Stars forward Tyler Seguin, who won a Stanley Cup with the Boston Bruins in 2011. “We lost to a team that we thought we could beat and sometimes, that's playoffs. Sometimes, it's that one bounce, that one goal, that one save. That's why we all love it. That's why it's the hardest damn trophy in the world to win.”
Despite knocking out each of the last two Stanley Cup champions — the Golden Knights in Round 1 and Colorado Avalanche in six games in Round 2 — it wasn't to be against the Oilers, who themselves suffered a bitter Western Conference Final defeat at the hands of the Avs in 2022.
In this series, the difference was special teams. Somehow, the Stars didn't score a single powerplay goal in six games, and it's going to be nearly impossible to beat a team like the Oilers in that situation. Certainly, Edmonton's penalty kill deserves a ton of credit, but it's a ghastly stat nonetheless.
Captain Jamie Benn, now 34-years-old, remains under contract with the Stars for one more year, but the same can't be said for a lot of his teammates. Chris Tanev, Matt Duchene and Joe Pavelski lead a group of eight pending unrestricted free agents, and Pavelski may have played his last NHL game.
“I believe that, yeah,” Benn told reporters when asked if the team is setup to compete for a Stanley Cup in the near future, per Clark. “But I'm not really thinking about it right now. This is a tough time.”
As it is for every team that gets this close, it'll be a tough offseason for a Stars franchise that is now 25 years removed from a championship.
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