After CEO's criticism, Seguin leading Stars' turnaround
By Adam GretzFeb 14, 2019, 2:03 PM EDT
The most noteworthy thing to happen to the Dallas Stars this season came at the end of December when team CEO Jim Lites loudly and profanely criticized his team's two best players, Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn, and pretty much blamed them entirely for the team's underachieving.
In doing so he absolved general manager Jim Nill of any and all blame for the team's shortcomings, and ignored the fact that even though Seguin and Benn were, at the time, having "down" years for their standards they were still by far the best and most productive players on the team.
It was an outrageous rant at the time, and it looks even more outrageous now that the Stars are sitting on fairly solid ground in the Western Conference playoff race thanks in large part to the play of their top players.
Specifically Seguin, who was one of the main targets in Lites' off the rails rant.
Please do not misinterpret that point.
This is not a commentary about how the criticism inspired their top players to play better.
That is an insult to the motivation of professional athletes and ignores the fact that, again, they were already carrying the bulk of the weight for the Stars early in the season. It is also an insult to their ability as players. They were highly productive NHL players before that, and would have continued to be whether or not those comments were ever made.
Top-tier players have the hardest job, the highest expectations, and the most pressure. When they only fulfill even 90 percent of those expectations they are going to get criticized for underperforming, even if their 90 percent is better than most everyone else's 100 percent. That is what was happening with the Stars through the end of December.
Seguin and Benn may not have been on their usual scoring pace, but they were still outperforming everyone else on the team by a substantial margin, while also outscoring and outplaying their opponents on a nightly basis. At the end of December when Lites sounded off, the Stars were outscoring teams 24-11 at 5-on-5 play when Seguin and Benn were on the ice together.
The Stars' goal differential without either of them was a minus-14 (34-48).
Where was the problem again?
In the 18 games since then, Seguin, Benn, and Alexander Radulov have still been the most productive players on the team.
Even though Seguin and Benn have been split apart a lot more often and used on separate lines, they've still outscored opponents by an 8-4 margin when they are together at 5-on-5. Without either on the ice the goal differential suffers an eight-goal swing (minus-4 … four for, eight against) in the other direction.
Seguin alone has 22 points in the 18 games since then and has been absolutely dynamite on a line with Radulov and is now on pace to exceed his normal career average for points in a season.
Benn's offense hasn't quite picked up, but given how much time he's spent away from Seguin and Radulov and has been asked to carry his own line that probably says more about the lack of depth the Stars have assembled than anything else. And that, again, falls back on the job of the GM for not assembling more talent around his two franchise players.
After all of that drama caused by the CEO the perception of the Stars immediately became that they were a dysfunctional mess of an organization and a sad-sack underachieving team going that was going nowhere instead of what they actually are. What they actually are is a team that has a handful of high-end, impact players in Seguin, Radulov, Benn, John Klingberg and an emerging star on the blue line in Miro Heiskanen that is probably actually overachieving this season.
The lesson to take away from all of this: Maybe don't publicly put your best players on blast for ruining your season unless you have a damn good reason for it. Because those best players are probably going to be the ones that end up saving your season in the end.
If Lites was so eagerly willing to call Seguin and Benn "f—— horse s—" for what he thought was them underachieving earlier in the season, he should be just as willing to publicly thank them (and especially Seguin) for the added gate revenue his team will get for making the playoffs on their backs and saving all of their jobs.
More: Stars' CEO ire should be directed at GM, not Seguin and Benn
Tags: Dallas Stars, Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Alexander Radulov, Jamie Benn, John Klingberg, Miro Heiskanen, Tyler Seguin