A four-game losing streak that took his Dallas Stars out of the Western Conference finals in five games left a bitter taste in the mouth of owner Tom Gaglardi. But he could still manage a laugh Friday morning when he talked about Canadian media calling him on the phone.
“They wanted to know if Pete [DeBoer] was out, they said the rumor up there was that he was out,’’ Gaglardi said Friday morning. “Are you kidding me? He’s a top three, top five coach in the league. You think I want to be going into the coaching market right now, do you see who’s getting hired? Pete’s a seasoned coach. I’m just one voice in the discussion but I don’t see [firing] Pete being on anyone’s agenda.’’
I always have to pinch myself when listening to Gaglardi. He’s a reminder that that’s how most professional sports owners talk. They hire a management team and they delegate the responsibility for those decisions to the general manager and others. Too much time spent around the Cowboys makes me forget these things.
But Gaglardi did admit to being surprised when he saw Casey DeSmith skating toward him (his suite is in that corner of the AAC) and Jake Oettinger heading to the bench barely seven minutes into the game. “I didn’t know if Jake was hurt, and I didn’t know what went into the coach’s decision. But it obviously wasn’t the start we wanted, and usually when you pull the goalie, it’s more about the team. It’s not an indictment of Jake. Those weren’t soft goals.’’
Still, the owner wonders about the fallout. Had DeBoer sent Oettinger back into the net for the start of the second period, would he have surrendered the same goals that DeSmith allowed? And would that have changed the tone of offseason conversations regarding Oettinger who, until that moment in Game 5, was viewed unequivocally as the Stars’ goaltender of the future. He probably still is, but now there’s a little asterisk next to his name, and you wonder what kinds of things Oettinger will hear from friends and family this offseason after being benched in the biggest game of the season.
Mostly, the bitterness Gaglardi feels is not directed at an individual but a team. Three straight years in the Western Conference finals. It takes a good team to get there, but a really good team shows improvement. This team showed regression.
“You should never beat a great team three in a row. And they beat us four in a row,’’ Gaglardi said. “I give Edmonton credit, they’re a really good team but they got so many lucky goals. How many goals are we going to give up off of someone’s skate? You gotta be good to be lucky, though. Last year we couldn’t score on the power play against them. This year we scored on the power play but couldn’t score five-on-five.’’
The owner was left pondering one of the same questions fans are asking about their team. Is it tough enough? Is not responding to cheap shots from Darnell Nurse and Evan Bouchard, as DeBoer asked of his players, really the way to go?
“Here’s the crux of it,’’ Gaglardi said. “You need a skill team to get through the regular season. You need toughness to get through the playoffs. We used to have a team where everyone was big, we had size, but we had trouble getting into the playoffs or we missed the playoffs. So we changed our approach, and we went after skill.’’
The Stars have plenty of it. Regular season stats don’t lie. But, as the owner said, the playoffs tend to be a different game with fewer power-play opportunities, fewer open looks at the goaltender, more shot blocking from defenders. He loved how Mikko Rantanen continued to battle even when the goal-scoring stopped in the conference finals (“he’s just a dog, did you see how he defends all the way down the ice?”) but can’t believe how his team was shut out four times in the playoffs and almost inevitably surrendered first goals.
He pointed out the Stars never scored a first-period goal in eight road games. None. That helps explain the 2-6 record away from the AAC. And to give up the first goal 15 out of 18 games, including all five against a team like the Edmonton Oilers? This team never gave itself a chance to improve on last year’s performance. It’s borderline incredible that they made it through the first two rounds.
Next year will be another year, another opportunity. But this was the team that went all in, Jim Nill pushing his first-round chips into the center of the table for Rantanen and Mikael Granlund. “I thought when we beat Colorado without Robo and Miro, and then we beat Winnipeg and I thought they were the best team in the West, we were on our way. But you look at Edmonton, after losing those first two games to LA, they’re 12-2 in the playoffs,’’ Gaglardi said.
“I think they’re the best team in the league. I think they’re going to win it all.’’
And then the Stars can at least feel like they are one step away from completing the journey that has escaped this franchise for a quarter of a century.
