The Mavericks and Stars sitting back with their feet up, watching rivals play a seventh game to see who will battle Dallas in the Western Conference finals. Now this is a new experience.
A month ago I suggested Boston, New York and Denver all had slightly better chances of sending two teams to the Finals in the NBA and Stanley Cup playoffs — no city has ever captured both in the same year. I was slightly off. The Bruins, Knicks and both the Avalanche and Nuggets have been dismissed from further playoff activity this spring. The Mavericks and Stars still going, still ticking, still reminding us of what a great sports city can feel like.
I did not even include South Florida’s trips last year in that column because while the Heat and Panthers both reached the Finals (and both lost), the hockey team plays northwest of Fort Lauderdale 37 miles from South Beach. Same TV market? Yes. Same feel and energy around the building? Not close.
What the two Dallas teams learned the last two nights — Minnesota rallying past Denver in shocking fashion, Edmonton holding off a furious Vancouver comeback late Monday — is that the next round is about two different things. For the Stars, it’s the known. For the Mavericks, it’s the unknown.
The Timberwolves, who spent much of the season in the No. 1 seed while Dallas hovered around the play-in slots, beat the Mavs three out of four times. But Doncic and Kyrie Irving played together only once against Minnesota and the Mavericks won. The teams have not met since January, so Minnesota really hasn’t seen this Dallas team since the P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford additions.
At the same time, the Mavs played Rudy Gobert and Mike Conley in the postseason two years ago when the Utah Jazz were going through a team-wide malaise. Dallas dispatched Utah in six games, and the Jazz was broken up with Donovan Mitchell landing in Cleveland and Gobert and Conley to Minnesota. Conley is healthier now and Gobert has size all around him in Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid. Basically, the Mavs are going from an opponent (OKC) that sees offensive rebounding as an inefficient waste of time to one that crashes the boards with abandon. Dallas outrebounded the Thunder by nearly five per game while Minnesota had 20 more rebounds than the Nuggets in their second-round series.
Where the Thunder pressured the perimeter, the T-Wolves make it extremely difficult to score in the paint where Doncic does much of his damage, especially against smaller defenders that don’t have a great rim protector. Minnesota has several.
Yet for the Stars, this feels like more of the same, both to the fans who understand that staying out of the penalty box against the Oilers is as essential as it was with Colorado — “you had an elite power play in Colorado, this is elite-plus,” Coach Pete DeBoer said — and to the head coach himself.
“It’s going to be a combination of what we did when we played Colorado and Vegas. It’s a bit of a hybrid," DeBoer said. “We’ve got to do all the things we did well against those two opponents. That will apply. That’s easier said that done. You’ve also got the best player in the world to deal with."
His reference was to Connor McDavid, who has only two goals in the first two rounds but has produced 19 assists. Edmonton has not only the top three points scorers in the playoffs — Leon Draisaitl (24 points), McDavid (21) and defenseman Evan Bouchard (21) — but also the top goal scorer who is not even a part of that group (Zach Hyman with 11).
“This Edmonton team has been on a roll for six months," DeBoer aid. “It’s a dangerous opponent."
The roll began when the Oilers had bottomed out in the Pacific Division with a 5-12-1 start after 18 games. An eight-game winning streak that began in late November pointed Edmonton in the right direction. Then came a 16-game win streak, just one shy of Pittsburgh’s all-time record.
But it’s hard to say the Oilers are playing at that level now. It took them a full seven games to hold off Vancouver which lost its top goalie one game into the playoffs. If the Stars avoid giving Edmonton more than two power plays per game, they should not be overly burdened in trying to advance to the Cup Final. Five-on-five the Stars have been the superior team, and goaltending is not even close with Jake Oettinger getting on top of his game during the Colorado series while the Oilers went back and forth with two goalies against the Canucks.
The Stars are a slight favorite. The Mavericks are perhaps a little more than a slight underdog. That doesn’t mean either series has to go in a particular direction. The other cities have fallen by the wayside. Only Dallas maintains hopes of playing both pro basketball and hockey in the middle of June.
It has never happened here, and nowhere have both teams in one arena managed to win championships. A month ago it was an idle thought. Doncic and Miro Heiskanen have made it much, much more than that now.
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