And in the first game of two-game set the Panthers won 6-4.

1. It was always going to be a big game.

Not because of the Finnish stage, although that added to it, but because of the teams involved.

The Florida Panthers are the defending Stanley Cup champions and back-to-back Eastern Conference title holders.

No one has played more hockey the past two seasons than Florida.

The Stars have been to back-to-back Western Conference Finals, while they’ve yet to get past that third round, the Stars have played more games than any team in the West the past two seasons.

This is one of the few games that could legitimately label a potential Stanley Cup Final preview.

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Here is the 20/20.

1. Hockey is a weird sport.

It’s chaotic and unlike others sports, sometimes good teams don’t throttle bad teams.

And then sometimes they do.

The Stars are a very good team, the Blackhawks are not and that was well reflected by the play on the ice Saturday for 40 minutes.

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Here is the 20/20.

1. From a scheduling perspective this could have been a garbage game.

Both teams played on Saturday and both were playing the second games of back-to-backs. Both also recently lost a top-four defender and were starting their backup goalie.

(I consider Joey Daccord the better Kraken goalie.)

It could have been an ugly contest.

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About three weeks ago Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill addressed Jamie Benn’s future with a bold, seemingly prophetic claim.

“My plan as long as I’m GM, he’s going to be a Dallas Star,” Nill said.

It’s both pragmatic and fan service at the same time. The Stars long-time captain is entering the final season of his eight-year deal, and with such a statement any specific contract negotiations and stories surrounding them can be pushed until the summer of 2025.

But it’s also a reality, that until a new contract is signed, tonight could be Benn’s final season-opening game as a Dallas Star.

And whether it’s in 2025 or a couple years later, at some point the Benn era will end in Dallas. And opening night, in my view, is the perfect time to talk about history.

Since the franchise moved from Minnesota, Benn and Mike Modano have been the two anchor characters in Stars history. Every single player that’s worn a Dallas Stars jersey has been a teammate of either Benn or Modano, who happened to be teammates of each other during the 2010-11 season.

At some point it seems likely that Benn’s No. 14 will join Modano’s No. 9 in the rafters at American Airlines Center.

The one thing that can change “likely” to “inevitable,” would be the addition of another banner, one with “Stanley Cup Champions” inscribed on it to run side-by-side with the banner from 1999.

And that’s what Benn is chasing in this potentially final season in Dallas. He already has a legacy, but hoisting the Stanley Cup would be the crowning moment of the second era of Stars history.

Benn knows that and he’s been painfully close before. There’s the iconic moment, capture on film, from the 2020 Stanley Cup Final in the Edmonton bubble where he sat in the Stars locker room, by himself, in full gear after everyone else had left.

He’s been to back-to-back Western Conference Finals, and two years ago it was his fault, courtesy of an awful cross-check to the neck of Mark Stone, that might have cost Dallas a chance to win it all.

Benn is no longer the Stars center piece, but he’s the compass and foundation of the team. Right or wrong, the Stars will follow their captain to the end of the earth, in both the positive moments — the Bennasaince — and in the worst moments, like the aforementioned ejection and then suspension in 2022.

And now, entering the 2024-25 season, Benn is at the point where he’s started to pass the torch to the third anchor character in the Stars franchise.

Wyatt Johnston’s backstory already has the built-in lore. He didn’t play an OHL game during his draft year because of COVID, but the Stars found him at the Under-18 world championships, in their own backyard, and drafted him in the first round anyway.

He lived with Joe Pavelski for two seasons, became an NHL fixture as a teenager, and would likely be the No. 1 pick in a re-draft of the 2021 class. Like Benn before him, he’s a player that was slightly under-valued in their draft year and has instantly turned into a find for the NHL team.

Johnston scored 41 points as a rookie, the same amount that Benn had as a rookie when he was teammates with Modano. Like Benn, Johnston got better as a sophomore and if trends continue, Johnston will likely be the Stars Most Valuable Forward this season.

While Jason Robertson or Miro Heiskanen might be the next captain, Johnston at 21 is the one with the longest staying power and build amongst the next era of Stars. He represents what the Stars are and will continue to be in the future, a dangerously efficient team that builds contending windows on top of contending windows.

The Stars as a franchise aren’t tied to the past, but they respect it. That’s Benn’s job alongside the likes of Tyler Seguin, the centerpiece of one championship window willing to step aside so the 2017 draft class could take center stage and then setup a prosper succession to Johnston’s era.

It’s a rarity as a franchise, where three names can potentially tie in every single player in franchise history. And on opening night, with Benn’s future at least somewhat murky, that’s something to celebrate.

For those who are new to this space, this is the 20/20. It’s effectively my thoughts and observations of a game in 20-point numbered list.

I’ll be doing these for a large handful of Dallas Stars and Detroit Red Wings games this season. Essentially if I’m sitting down to watch the game, I can’t help but take notes and have thoughts, so why not share them?

If you are reading this on the site and wondering, “hey why didn’t this end up in my email inbox?” then I’ll direct you to check out your account settings here and you can make sure to check the box to get Stars coverage.

It’ll look like this.

As I grow this site and effectively cover two markets, I want fans to be able to customize their coverage.

With that being said, let’s dive into the 20/20 from a preseason game between the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche that Dallas won 3-2 on a literal buzzer-beater.

1. Before we get any deeper in this piece, let’s call this game what it was — a Monday night preseason game, where both teams effectively fielded primarily AHL lineups.

Of the 20 players to dress for the Stars on Monday, roughly seven or eight will be NHL regulars this season.

Big name players sat this one out on both sides, so trying to read anything into the score of this game is pointless.

It was, however, more fun from a Stars perspective to win the game on a last second shot by Lian Bichsel that just beat the buzzer.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the overhead with the puck crossing the line with .2 seconds left on the clock.

Games are supposed to be fun, and this made the game more fun. But it doesn’t change the prior point about not reading too far into this result….

2. What we can read into is the how some positional battles are playing out and how certain line combinations and defensive pairings may or may not have started to mesh.

For example, it was intriguing watching Logan Stankoven on a line with Wyatt Johnston and Matěj Blümel, that’s a trio that could happen at some point in the regular season. Same goes for the pairing of Brendan Smith and Ilya Lyubushkin on the blue line, that’s a realistic duo.

3. Let’s start with that top line in this game, Stankoven-Johnston-Blümel.

Back in preseason Game 1, Stankoven was a menace and had nine of the Stars 26 shots against the St. Louis Blues. In preseason Game 2 he had the first scoring chance of the game in the first period and was once again a miniature menace on the ice.

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