Dallas is Colorado's last frontier and its greatest test

It’s hard to say in a season where the Colorado Avalanche finished with 92 points in just 70 games (a 107-point pace across an 82-game season) and led the NHL with 24 road wins that they left many demons behind.

Enter the Dallas Stars, however, and you have the only real pockmark on Colorado’s year. The Stars finished 4-0-0 against the Avs but Colorado grabbed two of a possible eight points thanks to losses beyond regulation. That left Dallas as the only team in the NHL the Avalanche failed to defeat this year.

What makes Dallas so difficult?

The Stars are singular in their focus on pretending to be what we all pretend the New Jersey Devils still are – committed to low-scoring hockey built around an excellent goaltender and versatile defense corps.

Dallas gets the job done with a less-is-more approach as nobody takes “first to three wins” more seriously than them. If a team even gets to three, that is, as the Stars were 26th in the NHL in scoring with just 2.58 goals-per-game but second in the league in allowing just 2.52 goals-per-game.

That razor-thin margin of error defined a roller coaster year for the Stars who started off terribly, recovered, mysteriously fired their head coach in the middle of the season, rebounded, and then saw the regular season just in the nick of time as they were badly fading once again.

It all left the Stars barely clinging to the fourth seed in the current round-robin format. While expectations have been low of the Stars coming in, they remain the final frontier for a Colorado team who has proven just about everything they otherwise needed to in order to convince the world they are a true Stanley Cup contender.

If the Avs lose tonight to Dallas, does it suddenly make them less of a contender? Certainly not. It would, however, increase the questions about Colorado’s ability to alter their fun-and-gun style to match that of a more defense-oriented opponent.

The St. Louis Blues have long been viewed as the benchmark for comparison simply because they’ve owned Colorado the last couple of years and are the defending champs. But Colorado’s win over them on Monday made them 3-2 against the Blues this year with all three wins coming outside of St. Louis, where no games will be played the rest of this playoff.

Colorado can hang with St. Louis, even if they have to use literally all 60 minutes to get the job done.

Against the Stars, however, the Avalanche has questions to answer.

The Avs like to get out and play fast but if you look at p/60 rates at even strength, the Stars and Avs create similar amounts of quality chances while the Avs have small leads in quantity.

The big difference is Colorado’s ability to finish, as the Avs shot 9.75% as a team this year (good for fifth) at even strength. Dallas, despite all the quality they managed to create, shot just 7.45% at even strength, putting them 29th just ahead of bottom-feeders Los Angeles and Detroit.

The Stars simply struggle to finish at even strength. Why is this a problem for Colorado, then? Because special teams still exist and while Dallas wasn’t exceptional, they were just about even with the Avs across both the power play and penalty kill.

If Colorado gives back their advantage at even strength on special teams, it’s not really much of an advantage, is it? Dallas does a great job of limiting high-danger chances on their PK (eighth in the NHL) while Colorado does a poor job in this area (24th).

The Avs have to learn to play a different game against these stingy Stars. They can’t beat themselves. Their natural tendency towards aggression needs to be toned down just enough to play the smart game.

Adapting to an opponent and finding success is one of the biggest keys to postseason success. Teams have no control over their opponents and have to be able to handle the challenges placed in front of them. We saw the Avs devour an unprepared Flames team last season before running into the jaws of an experienced, veteran-laden Sharks team that slowed Colorado up just enough in a grueling seven-game series.

The Stars represent everything this Avalanche team is not. Should Colorado win tonight, it not only guarantees the Avalanche a top-two seed in the round-robin format but also solves the only unfinished riddle of their regular season.