RIP 2010-2011 Dallas Stars

People often ask me what my favorite sport and/or team is, and I often give the same answer. "Whichever sport is playing." So when it's baseball season, it's the Rangers. When it's football season, it's the Cowboys. When it's college football season, it's the Frogs. Basically, whatever sport I'm watching is my favorite.

But the Stars have always had a special place in my heart. Being a Stars' fan is like being in a secret club. There aren't many of us, and there are even fewer of us that really understand or appreciate hockey. It's one of the reasons why I became a season ticket holder...because it certified that I was a real fan of this really cool team.

But things haven't been good for a while. Since the Stars won in 1999 (the last championship for the city of Dallas), things have gone downhill. But this year's team, while not supposed to do anything, exceeded expectations. They led the division for a while, even briefly leading the conference. And, for a while, it was really fun to be a Stars' fan again.

Then things started falling apart. Depth players started to get hurt, and minor leaguers had to start playing. Then Brad Richards got hurt. The team started to struggle. And they slowly fell out of the race.

And for a while, it seemed inevitable that the Stars were going to miss the playoffs. I even declared them dead about two weeks ago on this very blog. But despite that, they never went away. When they needed a win, they got it. But there was another problem: whenever someone else needed to lose, they didn't either.

And by today, it was very simple. The Blackhawks needed to lose and the Stars needed to win. The "victory" was a matchup with the dominant President's Cup winner Vancouver Canucks. The same Canucks that outscored the Stars 20-5 in four games this year.

But getting in was going to be worth it, whether they got swept or not. And by two this morning, the Stars were in good shape because Chicago lost 4-3. One win over Minnesota, a team they'd beaten three times this season, and they were in.

And they lost 5-3. It's a sad ending to a good season. The Stars got 95 points, which is usually good enough for a playoff appearance. They have a solid goaltender in Kari Lehtonen, an emerging star in Jamie Benn, and a great young power play quarterback in Alex Goligowski. They have a still-young team, and they're gelling.

They still need to figure out this ownership situation. They need to find a way to re-sign Brad Richards, who wants to stay but wants to get paid. They need to find a way to get a big bruising defenseman to go along with Nicklas Grossman. And they need to be more consistent.

But Joe Nieuwendyk is building a team that's going to compete for a long time. And while this season ended in a rough way, it's the start of something moreso than the end.