We’ve got a rematch of the 2020 Western Conference Finals on our hands. The Dallas Stars managed to survive the grueling, 7-game series against the Kraken as they won Game 7 2-1 to be the fourth and final team to advance to the Conference Finals.
This will go down as a legendary series in both franchises’ history.
Thwarting everything the Kraken threw at them, the Dallas Stars managed to finally close out the series with a 2-1 victory in Game 7 to reach their second Conference Finals in the last four years. And, even though the Stars ended up winning the series, both teams deserved to advance.
Out of all the Round 2 series, this was the one that showed the most fight, heart, emotion, and competitiveness between both teams as the Kraken and Stars players gave everything they had to earn the right of advancing to the Western Conference Finals.
Across all seven games of this series, both teams fought, bled, and battle for literally every loose puck, every forecheck, every rebound, and every half scoring chance as if it was their last…which is not something I can say about some other teams (cough…Maple Leafs…cough).
Many would never have expected a team that plays out of Dallas (you know the old and obviously wrong “hockey is a northern sport” adage) and a team that’s only been in the league for two seasons to have such competitiveness, yet here we are.
These two teams really put the effort some of the Original 6 and more popular NHL franchises (cough…Bruins, Leafs, Rangers, Jets) who played in this year’s postseason to shame with how they played across these last two or so weeks.
As I said, I would have been fine with either one of these teams advancing to the next round as they both deserved a chance of competing for the Clarence S. Campbell trophy (the Western Conference championship) and the Stanley Cup.
But, in the end, only one team could win out…and that was the Dallas Stars.
It should be pretty evident by the score that this was an extremely close, defensive Game 7 (as they almost always are) as both Jake Oettinger and Philipp Grubauer kept their teams in this game. Normally, I’d single out the goalie who I felt had the better game, but what both these tenders were able to overcome in this series to is nothing short of fantastic.
Oettinger overcame getting pulled twice in the series by having a 22-save, .957 SV% Game 7 performance, while Grubauer shrugged off a woeful regular season (he finished with 17 wins, 832 saves, .895 SV%, 2.85 GAA, 0 shutouts as the starter in the regular season) with his own incredible 26-save, .929 SV% game.
In fact, two of the three goals that went past these two were pretty much unsavable (Roope Hintz’s breakaway snipe late in the 2nd; Oliver Bjorkstrand’s rebound goal in the 3rd), while Wyatt Johnston’s game winning backhander 13-minutes into the 3rd period was just a great short in my humble opinion (some might say Grubauer could have done better).
Still, as I said, there really wasn’t much that happened in this game as the nerves and anxiousness that always comes with Game 7s sucked all the offensive firepower seen in all the other games of this series. Instead of the usual flashy zone entries and blitzing forward rushes, there was a lot of dump-ins, board battles, and lobs from one defensive zone to the other as the time winded down and the Stars kept a 2-goal lead until the dying moments of the game.
I mean, the average goals scored/game coming into Game 7 was a whopping 8.16! That’s how you know the Game 7 dogfight is real.
Nevertheless, as for the victorious Stars, their actual stars were came up huge in this game as Oettinger had yet another fantastic elimination game performance, Roope Hintz got on the board, and young rookie Wyatt Johnston scored a fantastic game-winning goal that’ll go down in Stars history as he’s now the youngest person to ever score a GWG in Game 7 history.
I don’t know if they’ll be able to beat the Golden Knights in the Conference Finals as Vegas is an even better defensive team than the Kraken, yet this postseason has been impossible to predict. Perhaps they’ll pull off another miracle over Las Vegas as they did in 2020 and reach the Stanley Cup Finals again.
As for the Kraken, those players have to hold their heads up high as they gave everything they had against a really good Dallas side. Nobody in the NHL predicted the Kraken would even win 40 games this season, let alone reach the playoffs, knock off the defending Stanley Cup champions in the 1st round, and then come up 1-goal short of reaching the Western Conference Finals.
Both teams have had amazing seasons, and it was a privilege to watch them battle it out.
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