Dallas Stars lose Stanley Cup Final to Tampa Bay Lightning, ending one magical run
The Dallas Stars were never going to win a Stanley Cup Final when their two highest-paid players combined for zero goals in the entire series.
Neither Stars captain Jamie Benn nor All-Star forward Tyler Seguin scored a single goal against the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games, and the 2020 Stanley Cup Final is over.
“It sucks,” Benn said.
The Dallas Stars arrived in Edmonton’s bubble on July 26, played 27 games, it ended on the September 28, and they will go home Tuesday.
With zero goal production again from their top line players, the Dallas Stars lost 2-0 against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 6 of the Cup Final, and with it the series, 4-2.
Tampa has its second Stanley Cup in franchise history, previously winning in 2004. The Stars must wait for their second after winning it all in 1999.
“We were two wins from the Stanley Cup,” Stars defenseman John Klingberg said after the game via Zoom. “It hurts a lot.”
In more than two months in the Edmonton bubble, the only thing the Stars did not achieve was to win their final game. In the end, the real achievement for this squad was simply overcoming the odds to reach the Stanley Cup Final.
Game 6 was not close. The Stars created few quality chances, and they did not register their tenth shot of the game until well into the third period. They looked wiped out, and they played like it.
“Everybody gave us everything they could,” Stars coach Rick Bowness said. “I couldn’t get anything more out of a team than we did. I could not ask for more from our players. It wasn’t enough to beat that team.”
Whenever the Stars’ front office types come around to reviewing their performance in the Final, they don’t need to look far.
For third consecutive series the Stars were the lower seeded team, and that finally got ’em. The Lightning simply had too much skill, too much talent.
While Seguin was more effective in Games 4 and 5, to have your two highest-paid players contribute no goals in the Stanley Cup Final is a recipe for a loss.
Seguin finished with five assists in the series; Benn only had one. Both showed signs of being players whose high-end production seasons are behind them.
Benn, 31, is signed through 2024-25, and has played a lot of heavy, hard, physical minutes in his career.
Seguin, who will be 29 next season, is signed through 2026-27, and has suffered the types of injuries that slow players.
After the game, Benn sat at the podium to talk to the media but he had a hard time answering questions.
“It was a good run. It’s tough. You’re two games away from the Stanley Cup,” he said.
Against Tampa, neither looked like top-caliber forwards.
Other than veterans Joe Pavelski and Corey Perry, no one on the Stars played the way they did en route to reaching the Final.
The Stars entered the Final as a team that had that look of those Cup-winning teams that defy statistics, and rosters, and just win. When they won won Game 1 over Tampa, it looked similar to their wins over Colorado and Vegas in the previous playoff rounds.
But then special teams happened, and it defined the series. Tampa’s was spectacular while the Stars’ were pedestrian.
Entering Game 6, the Stars were 1 of 16 on the power play; Tampa was 7 of 16.
Tampa’s first goal of the game on Monday night came, of course, on the power play when forward Brayden Point collected his own rebound to shoot the puck cleanly past Stars goalie Anton Khudobin.
The backup goalie, who was so good in winning the series against the Avalanche and Golden Knights, was exposed as a good backup.
The Stars needed Khubobin to be brilliant, but he was simply not as good as Tampa’s Andrei Vasilevskiy.
Khudobin allowed a second-period goal to Tampa forward Blake Coleman, from Plano, for a 2-0 lead that felt more like 20-0.
“There is no feelings right now. Just empty, you know?” Khudobin said after the game. “Right now, there is nothing.”
As was the case too often in this series, the Stars never sustained consistent offense and settled for dumping the puck in rather than relying on their talented defensemen to generate opportunities.
Defenseman Miro Heiskanen, the highest-scoring defenseman in the playoffs, finished with five points against Tampa.
The Stars were the underdog in this series for a reason, and they had no chance with guys like Benn and Seguin not scoring a single goal.
It was a captivating two months that that went further than expected, and it included several franchise highs, but the 2020 Dallas Stars finally lost to the better team.
This story was originally published September 28, 2020 at 10:37 PM.
