Here's the real reason the Dallas Stars might miss the playoffs

Jim Nill's goaltending gamble is not paying off. At least so far.

For the past month, the Stars' general manager has watched his team crater during the most important time period of the NHL regular season.

By Feb. 10, Dallas had accrued 70 points and occupied fourth place in the Western Conference (third place in a loaded Central Division). The team started to slide over the course of the next two weeks, but the free-fall really began March 1.

In their 11 games since the beginning of the month, head coach Ken Hitchcock's bunch has picked up just one win in regulation, one win in overtime and a meager seven points total. Two days after a soul-crushing 6-5 overtime loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on March 15, the Stars found themselves out of a playoff spot for the first time since Dec. 21.

As of Thursday afternoon, the club has the 10th-most points in the Western Conference and trails the eighth-place Los Angeles Kings by three points for the final wild card spot.

The primary reason this team remains in free-fall during the thick of the NHL playoff chase is the goaltending tandem of Ben Bishop and Kari Lehtonen.

Last season, Dallas netminders combined for the worst save percentage (.890) and the second-worst goals against average (3.17) in the NHL.

So, Nill spent big dollars to solve the problem during the offseason. In April 2017, he snagged the best available backstop on the free-agent market when he signed Ben Bishop away from the Tampa Bay Lightning with a substantial six-year, 29.5-million-dollar contract, according to Spotrac.com. The front office also kept Kari Lehtonen and his cap hit of $5 million.

That meant Dallas would pay their two goaltenders almost $10 million for the 2017-18 season, the highest amount of any team in the NHL. That figure accounts for 15 percent of the Stars salary-cap space this season and is also double the amount the average team spends on the position.

Those moves and others left the team with less than $1 million in salary-cap space, which ranks 24th in the NHL, per Spotrac. As a result, the Stars were not able to provide star forwards such as Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin any reinforcements at the Feb. 26 trade-deadline.

Nill's decision to sign the 30-year-old Bishop in particular was a high-risk, high-reward play. During his first three seasons in Tampa Bay, Bishop almost led the team to a Stanley Cup title twice. He also missed a number of key playoff games with various injuries and was eventually traded to the Los Angeles Kings at last year's trade deadline.

Through the first 65 of this season though, Nill's plan worked perfectly. In his first 50 appearances, Bishop went 26-17-4, stopped stopped 92 percent of the shots he faced and pitched five shutouts. In his first 22 appearances, Lehtonen went 11-6-1, also stopped 92 percent of the shots he faced, and pitched one shutout.

Then on March 5, Bishop suffered a lower-body injury that caused him to miss five games. In his second game back from that ailment on March 18, Bishop went down again. This time with a left-knee strain that will reportedly keep him off the ice for a minimum of two weeks until he is re-evaluated.

That means the Stars could be counting on their back-up goalie to fill in as the starter for at least their next six contests - possibly all eight remaining games of the regular season. In his eight appearances since Bishop's injury, Lehtonen has a 1-5-2 record, a save percentage of .898 and a .2.93 goals against average.

It's also possible that AHL call-up Mike McKenna, the team's new backup, could see time. The 34-year-old McKenna is a minor-league journeyman who's only played in 22 games in his NHL career. He's only played in one NHL game dating back to 2015.

It doesn't help that the Stars faced a brutal closing schedule to their season, with 11 of their final 16 games coming on the road. Seven of their final eight games will be against teams in the playoff hunt starting with the second-place Boston Bruins at the American Airlines Center on Friday night.

In addition to Bishop, forwards Jason Spezza (back injury) and Brett Ritchie (lower-body injury), as well as defenseman Marc Methot (hand), are still dealing with injuries that have caused them to miss time.

Dallas had an 88 percent chance to make the playoffs Feb. 10, according to Moneypuck.com. By March 22, that number had fallen to a paltry 12.5 percent.

Up until several weeks ago, it seemed like a safe bet that Nill's decisions to sign Bishop and keep Lehtonen would allow this team to make the playoffs and build on the immense promise it showed during the 2015-16 regular season. Instead, it looks as though uncertainty in the net is going to cause Stars to miss the postseason for the eighth time in the past 10 seasons.

This story was originally published March 22, 2018 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Here's the real reason the Dallas Stars might miss the playoffs."