Athletic strikes are never a good thing for anyone.
No one likes to listen to rich people argue over whether they should get more money, but others lose out, too.
The NHL sat out the 2004-05 season, and it may have hurt the Dallas Stars the most.
The MLB strike of 1994 turned a lot of fans away from baseball for a while. But in the dead of summer there isn’t anything else going on. The NHL and NBA run almost simultaneously. So when the Stars weren’t an option, Dallas fans turned their attention to the Mavericks.
The Mavericks reached their stride in the new millennium, making the playoffs for the first time in over a decade in 2000-01, the conference finals in 2002-03, and the finals last season.
The honeymoon from back-to-back NHL finals for the Stars and a Stanley Cup Championship from the 1999-2001 seasons ended when the season never began.
But there was still a chance for a revival for the only hockey team in the Lone Star State thanks to a strong showing in the 2005-06 season.
The Stars tied for the third-most points in the league and earned the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference. But that didn’t carry over well into the playoffs. The Stars saw their season slip away with a barrage of overtime losses to the seventh seed Colorado Avalanche. The Stars lost to the same Avalanche in the playoffs the year before the strike struck.
With an early exit from the Stars, the Mavericks once again had all eyes on them. They took advantage of that, doing something they had never done before: Make it to the finals.
The Mavericks sealed the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference before the NHL playoffs started, giving the Stars a chance to get a full audience.
But a tough first-round draw saw the Stars get the evenly matched Vancouver Canucks. The Stars had a better regular-season record, but the Canucks’ winning the weaker Northwest Division title gave Vancouver home advantage.
The first game was an exciting quadruple-overtime thriller, but for the seventh time in eight overtime games, the Stars were unable to score the golden goal and fell 0-1 in the series.
Game two saw the Stars get what they needed from the defensive side: a shutout. Not showing a strong ability to score, Marty Turco stopped all 35 shots he saw and the Stars evened the series at a game a piece with a 2-0 win.
Overtime got the best of the Stars again in game three. Getting one goal wasn’t enough as the Canucks found the back of the net in overtime once again.
Game four saw the first 40-plus minutes without a goal, then three goals within five minutes. The Stars were on the losing end of another 2-1 game.
The Stars will now have to win the next three games straight to remain in the playoffs.
And another first-round exit could mean bad news for the Stars, especially if the Mavericks make it as far as they did last season or win it all.
Most sports overlap. The end of baseball sees the beginning of football season, the end of football season sees the beginning of hockey and basketball, and the end of those seasons brings the cycle all the way around back to baseball.
But the only two that largely coincide are basketball and hockey. And when one isn’t doing as well as they should, focus shifts to the other sport.
