Over the last five seasons, only one team has made the Stanley Cup final multiple times: the Tampa Bay Lightning. But the Dallas Stars are five wins away from joining that club, having made it to the final in 2020 before losing to the Bolts in six games.

Dallas keeps a low profile. Its stars don’t attract the same publicity as some of their peers. Media people don’t generally invoke the term “dynamic” when discussing their style of play. But since bringing in coach Peter DeBoer in the last off-season, the team certainly has a more offensive bent while maintaining its smothering defensive play. With the conference finals a win away, DeBoer’s Stars have hit on the right balance.

The inimitable NHL analyst Mike Kelly had a revealing stat on Twitter, where he highlighted that Dallas has 48 shots on net from the inner slot in the second round while limiting the Seattle Kraken to 18, the fewest of any team. It is a perfect distillation of Stars hockey: Fight your way into the middle to receive a pass or produce a tip while defensively preventing your adversary from doing the same.

Dallas Stars at Seattle Kraken
Saturday, May 13 – 7 PM ET

Can the Kraken stop the Stars’ offence when Miro Heiskanen plays a full game? Through five games, we haven’t seen it. In Game 3, Heiskanen got hit in the face with a puck, removing him from the game, and the Stars imploded, losing 7-2. But in each of the four contests in which Heiskanen didn’t leave the game with an injury, the Stars scored at least four goals.

The Stars can score in myriad ways. Their offence thrums from the forecheck, cycle, or rush, and on the power play it is formidable. Their defencemen can goose their offence by spearheading the rush or finding shooting lanes for shot-passes. Also, recent developments have rendered a consolidation with Joe Pavelski moved back on to the first line.

From a betting standpoint, this rocks. The best line in hockey is back together, and on the second line, Jamie Benn and Wyatt Johnston continue to build on their successful partnership. I think the Stars’ offence is the road map to profitability.

The Kraken pulled a shocking upset over the Colorado Avalanche in Round 1 partly because of the efficacy of their forecheck. The speed of their first two forecheckers created mayhem for Colorado, and Seattle was able to spend extensive time in the offensive zone.

But the Stars are better than the Avalanche at making quick defensive reads and gapping up, allowing them to kill plays expeditiously. The Stars’ ability to keep teams to the perimeter functions as a defensive carapace.

Of course, even good defences have vulnerabilities and Dallas is no exception. The Stars will overload on the puck in their own zone, leaving space on the weak side, although Seattle has only managed to capitalize on this vacant ice a few times. And in the case of Pavelski’s goal in Game 5, it was the Stars’ layers of defence flooding the puck that allowed them to steal possession and move quickly into transition when Seattle got caught a man short on the Stars’ four-man attack.

The Pavelski goal and Hintz’s first goal in Game 5 underscore the central problem for the Kraken: How do they generate scoring chances with forechecking pressure but not get caught beneath the puck? We saw Seattle bleed transition chances to Colorado at times, but only the Avs’ top players were able to expose Seattle in this way. Against Dallas, the Kraken aren’t getting enough zone time to sap Dallas’s rush offence, and the Stars offer more capable players who can prey on Seattle’s forechecking struggles.

Also, the offensive viability of the Stars’ top-six forwards extends beyond their transition game. Off the forecheck and cycle, Dallas can impose itself. It is an excellent faceoff and retrieval team, and when the puck is pinging around the offensive zone, players like Pavelski, Hintz, and Benn constantly wedge themselves in the lanes looking for tips when the puck is pushed to the point.

Even when the Kraken succeed at boxing them out, the Stars can invert their point of attack and create from below the goal line. In Game 5, Johnston’s goal and Hintz’s second tally resulted from Dallas feeding the puck from the goal line into the slot.

The Stars’ power play has been boom-or-bust in this series after being a dominant force in Round 1. Dallas likes to move Hintz and Benn between the slot and the flank, but the potential of a shot-pass into the slot for a tip means that on one goal sequence two or more of the Hintz-Pavelski-Benn trio could hit. The Kraken have been affording Dallas two-to-three man-advantage opportunities a game, and after creating all their goals at 5-on-5 in Game 5, perhaps Dallas’s power play has a moment in Game 6. If it does, it stands to reason that Hintz, Pavelski, and/or Benn will be prominently involved.

Of the teams remaining, Jake Oettinger and Philipp Grubauer have the worst Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx), with Oettinger edging out Grubauer for the very worst. Oettinger’s uneven play has me a little wary of the Stars pulling out the victory. The over for player points for Hintz, Pavelski, and Benn are practically the same price as the Stars’ moneyline and, with DeBoer’s lineup shuffling, those three are going to be relied on for offence.

In Round 2, the Stars have the best high-danger chances percentage and expected goals percentage. If the Stars advance, it is foolish to discount them, assuming Oettinger recovers his game.

I don’t want to have to worry about Dallas’s goaltending. Instead, I feel confident in Dallas’s ability to control play and manufacture offence.

Picks: Joe Pavelski O 0.5 points -150, Roope Hintz O 0.5 points -165, Jamie Benn O 0.5 points -140