Stars Must Avoid Woeful Power Play Stat from Previous Oilers Series

Yahoo

21-05-2025

The Dallas Stars are a different team for this year's rematch of the Western Conference Final from 2024 against the Edmonton Oilers for a multitude of reasons, but one miserable special teams statistic from last season has to be avoided at all costs.
A major factor in the 4-2 series loss to the Oilers last season was the abysmal 0-for-14 power play statistic for Dallas (while even allowing a short-handed goal). The Stars could never get anything going on the man advantage against what was statistically an average-at-best penalty kill unit on the other side.
In fact, the power play woes continued right into this year's regular season, essentially lasting until the end of the 2024 calendar year. So often, the two units looked stagnant on the ice, not moving their skates and barely moving the puck, which made them extremely predictable as a unit. The power play at home was under 10 percent for the first half of the season.
The Stars found mild success on the road even when they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at home, but it finally revved up after Jan. 1. The team went from 28th overall in the league before the new year to fourth overall in 2025.
Part of that was due to Thomas Harley's outburst after Miro Heiskanen was injured. Harley moved to the top power play unit and put up 15 power play points in three months. Harley only had three points on the man advantage before that.
That second half success carried into the playoffs, where the Stars are clipping along at over 32 percent through two rounds. The Oilers penalty kill couldn't stop the Los Angeles Kings no matter what they tried in the first round, but Edmonton still managed to win that series in six games. Then, Edmonton took advantage of a Vegas lineup where goal scoring had dried up throughout the lineup.
So both teams come in to the series on completely different trajectories than last year, but the possibility of a repeat for Dallas should scare them into putting extra emphasis on executing this season.
If the 0-for wasn't bad enough for Dallas, the Oilers went 4-for-11 on the job, which was enough to sink Dallas in several games. Even though there were other factors as to why Edmonton won the series, the special teams performance on both sides was more than enough to doom the Stars.
The big question for Dallas is whether to keep Harley on the top unit or re-insert Heiskanen there. In the three games Heiskanen has played since his long injury absence, Dallas has chosen to ease him back onto the top unit more often. But Harley scored the overtime series winner against Winnipeg as part of the second unit that barely had 30 seconds to work after Heiskanen's unit was unsuccessful.
Head coach Pete DeBoer said that it would be more of a game-by-game feel thing, and even joked that Harley would probably show them why taking him off the top unit was a bad idea. One would think that winning a series would be Harley showing them, but it sounds like nothing has been fully set in stone for the Western Conference Final.
If Dallas has hopes to get revenge for last season and make it to the Stanley Cup Final, execution on special teams better be at the forefront of the ways to a different outcome.
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