DALLAS — To their credit, none of the Dallas Stars registered any complaints about the second best team in the West being forced to face the third best team in the West in commissioner Gary Bettman’s convoluted playoff system after being eliminated in Game 6 in St. Paul, Minn. Smart. Wouldn’t have sounded right. I’m not going to complain about it much either, although, like most fans or ...

Dallas Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger and Minnesota Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt shake hands after the Stars were eliminated in Game 6 of a first-round playoff series at Grand Casino Arena on April 30, 2026, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

David Berding/Getty Images North America/TNS

DALLAS — To their credit, none of the Dallas Stars registered any complaints about the second best team in the West being forced to face the third best team in the West in commissioner Gary Bettman’s convoluted playoff system after being eliminated in Game 6 in St. Paul, Minn.

Smart. Wouldn’t have sounded right.

I’m not going to complain about it much either, although, like most fans or observers, I don’t think there’s any fairness when the Anaheim Ducks have already advanced to the next round by beating a team that had a worse record than the Wild’s, even though Anaheim trailed Dallas by 20 points in the standings this season. Yeah, it makes no sense, but Minnesota could have voiced an even louder complaint — forced to open on the road despite a much better record than Vegas or Edmonton — and the Wild just went out and outskated the Stars to death instead.

A first-round loss leaves more questions than answers. Is this the price owner Tom Gaglardi and GM Jim Nill pay for caving into the players’ whining about Pete DeBoer after last year’s third straight conference finals loss? I think Glen Gulutzan is a good coach, and those 112 regular-season points mean something, but he’s not yet a proven coach like DeBoer. Doesn’t have any playoff track record to speak of beyond a 2-8 record with Calgary and now Dallas. When you stall coming out of the gate in the Stanley Cup playoffs, you open yourself to a lot of second-guessing.

The Stars’ inability to do anything beyond scoring on the power play (which, it should be mentioned, is a unit Gulutzan coached in Edmonton and knows what he’s doing) was remarkable. They went more than three hours between Jason Robertson’s 5-on-5 goal early in Game 3 and Mavrik Bourque slipping one past Minnesota rookie Jesper Wallstedt in the second period of Game 6. A team as well structured (and funded) as the Stars can’t do that in the playoffs.

But while the team’s offensive failings (outscored 14-4 in 5-on-5 play) were duly noted, it was the defensive breakdowns that kept haunting this team. Even in the runs to the conference finals, the Stars never had more than five D-men that DeBoer believed in, leading to players taking on too many minutes. This year they asked Jake Oettinger to stop more point blank shots than any good team ever should.

The fans’ beloved Otter did not distinguish himself, statistically, in this series — .893 save percentage, 2.83 goals against — but I would put a lot less heat on him for this failure than DeBoer did for his collapse against the Oilers.

These are some of the questions that came to mind most readily after Game 6.

Where did you go Thomas Harley?

The Stars’ second best D-man, good enough to play for the Canadian team in the Winter Olympic Games, was a no-show for the six-game series. Normally an efficient puck-carrier, he was a zero on the scoresheet and a minus-6 player on the ice. Had some huge defensive mistakes in the series that led either to goals or prime scoring chances. Pretty inexplicable.

What's with the captain, Glen?

In the Stars’ last spasm of desperation, pulling Oettinger in the final minutes in search of that tying goal, Gulutzan sent out Jamie Benn as the sixth attacker. Yes, he led the league in scoring once. Wyatt Johnston was in the sixth grade. Benn had no business being on the ice with his zero-point production in this series, and, frankly, he had no business playing in Game 6 after his vicious cross-check in retaliation in Game 5. The mindless hit on Vegas’ Mark Stone that got him suspended for two games in the 2023 conference finals was no worse than this one.

(Note: The games Benn missed in those finals are the only two that Dallas won.)

Anyway, Benn lost the puck at the blue line and the Wild was off to the races for the 4-2 lead and the punctuation mark on their series victory. I have written before that I think a captain should be someone who plays more than Benn (he was tied with Oskar Back for 14th in minutes played for Dallas this series) and who is a more willing spokesperson for the team in difficult times, but the Stars do what the Stars do.

Was 2025 just a dream, Mikko?

Dallas’ best player, Mikko Rantanen, scored one goal in the series. He had seven points in six games which is not bad at all, but all seven came on the power play. At even strength, he didn’t exist, and he finished a minus-8 for the series.

In the Stars’ run to the Stanley Cup in the Modano-Nieuwendyk-Hull era, no player ever carried the team the way Rantanen did a year ago against Colorado and Winnipeg, the Presidents' Trophy winner. When I asked Gulutzan early in the series if Rantanen was fully recovered from the injury he suffered in Italy, the coach said, emphatically, “He is now.”

In other words, no excuses.

The Stars should be good enough to win a tough series without Roope Hintz. A year ago they won the first round without Heiskanen, which is a much tougher test. But Minnesota’s really good, and Quinn Hughes right now is the closest to Bobby Orr this league has to offer, as Colorado and Cale Makar will find out in the next round.

There are more questions to be considered as the long offseason begins. The Stars have gone from a team banging on the door to the Stanley Cup to one of eight making an early exit. Have they truly slipped back to that 2022 level? Are the Stars going the wrong direction?

Lots of questions. Not many good answers.