Tyler Seguin says he thinks the past two seasons of Dallas Stars hockey would make for a good book.
The 2019-20 season started with eight losses in nine games, followed by 11 wins in 12 games. The coach was fired at midseason for conduct detrimental to the team -- it was later revealed that the firing was due to an addiction to alcohol. Then the season was abruptly halted for the COVID-19 pandemic. It restarted with Dallas in the Edmonton bubble, where they stunned the NHL with a run through the Western Conference to the Stanley Cup Final, only to lose to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The 2021 season started with a COVID-19 outbreak on the team that delayed Dallas' first game by a week and a half. In February, four more games were postponed because of a deadly ice storm in Texas. Injuries piled up as quickly as did one-goal losses -- the Stars had 14 overtime or shootout losses this season, most in the NHL.
"We had injuries. We had COVID. We had a lot of things. In the back of my head, I could count how many excuses we had," Seguin told ESPN recently. "But I still felt like we were going to find a way, because we're just a pesky little group that won't go away."
Until they went away. Dallas finished with 60 points, four behind the Nashville Predators for the final playoff spot in the Central Division. The Stars became the first team since the 2012-13 New Jersey Devils to miss the playoffs after losing in the Cup Final.
"It's disappointing to go from making the Stanley Cup Final to not even making the playoffs. That is abnormal," Seguin said. "At the end of the day, we know how good our team is when we have everybody in the lineup. I love us against anybody."
A fall from grace like this might necessitate sweeping change for an organization. But Dallas stayed the course at the trade deadline and appears ready to return most of its team for the 2021-22 season.
"When people ask what went wrong this year, I still look at so many things that went right. Which is why I'm happy we didn't do crazy things at the deadline, lose a bunch of guys," Seguin said. "I'm happy that the messaging was to keep a lot of the same players for next year and give it one last shot."
The injuries began before the season. Goalie Ben Bishop, who was injured during the bubble playoffs, missed the entire regular season after right knee surgery on Oct. 21, 2020. Seguin had offseason hip surgery, and then he had a right knee scope six weeks later. The time on the shelf cost him his quad muscle, and he's in the process of building the muscle back.
"When I first got the surgeries, my mindset was to come back at 100-110% and I'll take our team to the next level," Seguin said. "That was tough mentally to wrap around: that I couldn't come back at 110%, with losing my whole quad and the depth of my hip surgery and knee stuff. So I knew I could come back at 70-80%, but then it was about when I should come back. We were in that race, so it was either I was going to play now or I would wait until next year when I was 100%."
He managed to play three games, scoring two goals.
It was hard for Seguin to watch the Stars' season play out as it did. He almost missed the entire season. Alexander Radulov, another offensive dynamo, was limited to 11 games.
"We couldn't finish it off in overtime or the shootout. That's where a lot of guilt comes into it for me," Seguin said. "I know that I'm good in the shootout and I love the 3-on-3 overtime. I was dying to help in any way that I could. I'm not trying to be a broken record, but it was tough."
There were major injuries for the Stars, but also nagging ones that contributed to their downfall.
"We had numerous injuries due to the condensed schedule. I've never seen so many groin pulls and hamstring pulls during the season. I give our guys a lot of credit for fighting through it," said Stars general manager Jim Nill.
Then there was the COVID-19 outbreak that started the season. The NHL didn't release how many Dallas players were on the COVID-19-related absences list, but it had an impact.
"The guys who had COVID, it's not like you had a flu for a couple of days. It stays with you. I know guys were tired. But it affected every team. It's something that we've never had to deal with it before," said coach Rick Bowness, who was officially hired this season after leading Dallas to the Stanley Cup Final as an interim coach.
Nill says he believes that the winter storm had a bigger impact on Dallas than the early-season delay for COVID-19.
"The winter storm really set us back. That was five-seven days of really not doing anything. Players were just trying to look after their families," he said.
The Stars played 28 straight games with one day of rest between each of them, followed by a stretch of seven games in 11 days to end March.
"Once we saw the schedule, we knew it was going to be a grind the rest of the way, especially because we knew we'd have injuries through it," Nill said.
Still, the Stars battled through, until they ran out of gas. They went 4-5-2 down the stretch, with only one of those wins coming in regulation.
"The goal here is to make the playoffs and we didn't do it," Nill said. "But what the players went through ... I told the players that during a typical season, you have a lot of bad games that you just want to wash away. But we were in almost every game. And I think our record reflects that in the number of overtime games we played. Which ended up costing us, because we didn't enough of those."
Bowness says he hopes the Stars grow from this season.
"It was an experience. It was an experience that will make us better and stronger as a team. An experience that you grow from," he said, "and an experience you hope you never have to go through again."
Seguin now turns his attention to the offseason. First up: Jumping into the NFT game. He worked with Fanaply to create a series of nonfungible tokens. Two of them are at auction until May 23; one, featuring Seguin's tattoos, started at $25,000 and includes a VIP experience with Seguin at a Stars game.
Seguin had his NFTs lined up and ready to go earlier in the season but felt strange about releasing them at a time when he was injured.
"I really wanted to bank on being the first hockey guy to do it. But I was hurt, and I was trying to not to be a distraction to anybody. Especially to my teammates with all of the COVD stuff and getting shut down. I was just trying to keep my distance. Then [Matthew] Tkachuk came out with his, and I was kinda bummed we missed it," he said.
But mostly, the offseason will be spent building up his quad and getting to 100%.
"The biggest thing for me is the last phase, which I couldn't really do, which is get any explosion," Seguin said. "I couldn't really stand here now and do a squat or do a jump or go for a jog. There's the cut-and-dry hip surgery, and then there's the knee surgery. But because I did them within a month, what we didn't really anticipate is the nerve damage it caused and having to lose my whole quad. It just took time. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. It wasn't always there the last few months. I know I'm getting better."
After that, Seguin is ready to help write perhaps the last chapter for this group. The Stars have only eight players now under contract for the 2022-23 season, Seguin among them. Joe Pavelski and John Klingberg are both entering the final seasons of their contracts. The team sees next season as a potential last ride -- the final chapter in the aforementioned book.
"I think there's a certain finality," Seguin said. "All the guys on our team know in the back of our minds that we got guys whose contracts are coming up. We all know it's a salary cap world, and we'd like to keep everybody, and I'm sure we're going to try. But we also know this is a business. It is what it is. But I haven't been on another team like this, where everyone is so close. We've got something special here."