It's been a rollercoaster Season 18 for the Dallas Stars that saw them fall out of the playoff race at mid-season but a 13-4-3 record in their last 20 games has them back at the top of the Central Division in a very competitive Western Conference. With 24 games remaining, can Dallas maintain this pace and secure a top 4 playoff berth or will they be fighting for their playoff lives down to the wire? Can Brayden Point maintain his torrid pace and win the Art Ross Trophy as the league's top scorer?

Point, who was voted by the CMHL GMs to the Season 18 All-Star Team, has been a revelation for Dallas this season and has been in the top 5 of league scoring all season. With 55 assists in 58 games, he already has more assists than he did all of last season and he's easily onpace to outdo last season's goals total. Regardless of his linemates, there's no doubt that Point has been the Stars MVP this season.

Did we say this season has been a rollercoaster? The Stars started out extremely strong, going 13-3-2 through their first 18 games and looking like they were on track to repeat last season's President's Trophy win. But on Day 39 of the season, in their 19th game, the Stars faced off against the Vancouver Canucks in what would completely change the tone of the franchise. A 5-2 loss to the absolutely dominant Canucks kicked off a brutal stretch that saw the the Stars go 5-11-4 through their next 20 games and plummet down the standings. Along the way, coach Paul Maurice was unceremoniously fired and the team made 6 trades to try and right the ship. No one was safe as franchise forward Evgeni Malkin was dealt early on in the slump for young star Alex DeBrincat. Numerous different line combinations were attempted to rejuvenize the careers of players like Brock McGinn and Nick Cousins who between them had 5 points through the first 40 games of the season and looked like shells of their former selves.

The moves seem to have paid off and the ship, now under the control of Jared Bednar, seems to have been righted. Sitting in 4th place in the West and atop their division with a 31-18-9 record, you wouldn't necessarily realize how close GM habsfan93 was to calling it quits on the season but it was close! The turning point seems to be a 4-2 win over the New York Rangers which broke a 1-4-3 streak and kicked off the current success in the last 20 games. That Rangers game is notable because it marked a minor but significant lines change for the Stars that they have maintained ever since - Nick Cousins was dropped as the team's 3rd line center and moved up to play the wing on the 2nd line with Stephenson and Rust. In his place, Oskar Sundqvist (who was acquired in a trade for struggling forward Eeli Tolvanen) moved over to center the 3rd line with Brock McGinn and Jakub Vrana. Since Cousins' move to the 2nd line, he has generated some nice chemistry with Bryan Rust who, after a very bad start to the season, is once again looking like the 90 point player he was last year. McGinn meanwhile seems to also have found his stride as both he and Cousins now have 10 and 12 points respectively, with nearly all of that production coming in the last 20-30 games.

Two major pieces added through trades were, however, on the blueline in Darnell Nurse and Zach Bogosian. The pair were acquired in exchange for the Stars 3-4-5 dmen Jake Muzzin, Jonas Siegenthaler and Nick Leddy and both have had a major impact on the Stars since their acquisitions. Nurse, in particular, is now the 4th leading scorer on the team behind Point and the #1-2 pair of Fowler and Ekman-Larsson.

Some insiders have associated the team's slump with the decision by star netminder Ben Bishop to retire at season's end. One industry insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity, stated that the announcement was purely selfish and a major blow to team morale considering he had only months before signed a two-year contract extension to be the CMHL's highest paid goalie. Bishop himself struggled along with the team during the slump but has also excelled in recent games and continues to maintain a stats line that places him among the top 5 goalies in the league. 

The questions around the Stars now shift to the trade deadline as the Stars have five significant pending UFAs in Bryan Rust, Mats Zuccarello, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Zach Bogosian and Cam Talbot. Should Talbot walk and with Bishop retiring, it could leave a serious vacuum at goalie in Dallas. Though the Stars do have Jake Allen and Karel Vejmelka waiting in the wings, neither is expected to perform at the level of Ben Bishop over the last two seasons. Ekman-Larsson is having a season worthy of Norris consideration while Rust and Zuccarello are two of the team's top scoring forwards. With the likelihood of Dallas keeping all these players in town slim to nil and Vancouver the heavy favorite to walk straight to the Stanley Cup, rumours are flying that more moves are coming in Dallas' future.

Only time will tell what the Stars have in store. 

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