DeBoer Coaching Magic Works Fourth Time

Good morning and happy Tuesday, May 16th.

With a brief break in NHL action, we’re taking tomorrow off but we’ll see you first thing Thursday morning with a special Conference Finals preview. 👊

Today’s lineup:

• Stars earn Western Conference Finals appearance

• NHL announces Sun Belt Conference Finals schedule

• And a lot more 👇

Stellar goaltending and stingy defense are nice, but the surest way to guarantee a conference finals berth is to hire Pete DeBoer as coach.

The Dallas Stars edged the Seattle Kraken 2-1 Monday in Game 7 to earn a place in the Western Conference Final and make DeBoer only the second coach to get there with four different teams.

DeBoer previously has reached the conference finals with the New Jersey Devils, San Jose Sharks and Vegas Golden Knights. The only other coach to achieve that feat is legendary Scotty Bowman. He reached the conference finals with five teams (Montreal Canadiens, St. Louis Blues, Buffalo Sabres, Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings). Unlike Bowman, DeBoer reached the conference finals in his first season with his teams.

The Stars will face one of DeBoer’s former teams, the Vegas Golden Knights, in this season’s Western Conference Final. It starts Friday in Las Vegas.

Rookie Wyatt Johnston, 20, scored the series-clinching goal against the Kraken, making him the youngest player in NHL history to score a series clincher in a Game 7. Johnston is 75 days younger than Jaromir Jagr was when he tallied a Game 7 clincher as a rookie in 1992.

Johnston scored at 12:48 of the third period to give Dallas a 2-0 lead, and that became ultra-important when the Kraken netted a goal late.

Goalie Jake Oettinger made 22 saves for the Stars. Counting both the regular-season and playoffs, Oettinger is 22-1-3 in games after a loss. He is 5-0 in that situation in these playoffs.

Dallas defenseman Ryan Suter has played 1,470 NHL games and he now has the record for most games needed to reach the conference finals.

🗓️ NHL announces Conference Finals schedule. Tonight and tomorrow are days off for all four teams.

The Eastern Conference Finals begin Thursday, May 18th, at PNC Arena in Raleigh, NC and go every-other-day until one team captures four wins. All games for the Eastern Conference Finals are scheduled for 8 PM ET.

The Western Conference Finals begin Friday, May 19th, at 8:30 PM ET in T-Mobile Arena in Vegas. Game two is at 3 PM ET Sunday, May 21st, with the rest of the series played every-other-night at 8 PM ET until someone earns a berth to the Stanley Cup Finals.

Who holds the NHL’s all-time record for most games played without winning the Stanley Cup?

• Sun Belt Showdown: NHL heads south for entire final four

• Oettinger believes Stars can win Stanley Cup for 1st time since 1999

• Vegas Won As A Team By Dominating Every Important Individual Matchup

• Hurricanes' Teuvo Teravainen nears return from hand injury

• The Panthers have restored Maurice's love of hockey

• Kraken hungry for more after 1st taste of playoffs ends in Game 7 loss

• Connor McDavid on Oilers' playoff exit: Winning teams go through this

• What Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Dubas said about their Leafs future

• Ten Stanley Cup playoff lessons learned in 2023

• Opinion: The NHL must improve its review system - and it can

• Perpetual forecheck drill

• Series of drills working on escapes, puck protection, and deception

TRIVIA ANSWER

Patrick Marleau’s 1,657 games played is the NHL’s all-time record for most games played without winning the Stanley Cup.