How sports science will impact the Dallas Stars travel schedule and goalie usage

The Dallas Stars will spend more time on airplanes than any other team this season.

According to calculations by Thomas Nestico, the Stars will log roughly 56,700 miles this season.

That’s more than 5,000 miles more than the second-most on the list and nearly double what the Pittsburgh Penguins will travel, roughly 31,700 miles, all the way down at 32nd.

To be clear, this is a side effect of being selected to play in the NHL’s Global Series in Finland at the end of October against the Florida Panthers. That trip alone accounts for close to 10,500 miles round-trip from Dallas to Tampere.

When you isolate that outlier, the Stars are traveling closer to 46,200 miles within North America this season, which would rank sixth in the league behind the Anaheim Ducks, Edmonton Oilers, Utah Hockey Club, Seattle Kraken, and Winnipeg Jets.

Stars GM Jim Nill has spent a lot of time thinking about that travel schedule and how it impacts athlete performance.

During the 2023 NHL Playoffs, the Stars felt the travel to and from Seattle in the second round was particularly draining on the team. Coincidence or causation, the Stars then lost in the Western Conference Final to the Vegas Golden Knights.

That was part of the reason Nill started looking further into building out a sports science department last summer, something he told me about over at my Substack Shap Shots, and mentioned travel and sleep studies were first on the list.

A year later, I checked in with Nill on where things were on that front and how it’s been implemented so far.

“We’ve really expanded in that now,” Nill said. “They’re really digging into the sleep awareness monitoring. They are managing practice time, and really watching that. When and where is the work dropping off in practice, and why. We’ve got them tracking all that, and we are using that to make decisions.”

For years, the NHL standard practice has been to travel the night of a road game, with players working out after a game and then loading up for the next destination. This past season, the Stars started taking more flights the day after, a move that led to more time in hotels and better sleep, while it also meant sacrificing some practice time.

“If you fly at night from certain spots, you aren’t getting in until five in the morning, and then you are counting on everyone on the plane being able to sleep well, and that’s not reasonable,” Nill said. “So you look at it this way instead now, you get some good sleep at the hotel, get some breakfast, and fly out closer to 10.”

As noted before, those flights make it harder to schedule practices, and the Stars did practice less than most NHL teams last season.

The Stars also were one of the best teams in the NHL, so it worked pretty well.

Dallas was, and remains, a veteran-heavy team, which Nill said greatly contributed to his confidence when he and Pete DeBoer considered practicing even less than the Stars had in the past.

“I’ve got to give a lot of credit to our players,” Nill said. “A lot of times I’ve seen travel become an excuse, and I think it was used as an excuse in the past. But our players and our leadership have really learned how to manage that. It’s a mental thing. The travel is going to be tough, but you still have to find a way to win, and that’s a mentality our organization now has, and that’s a credit to players and coaches.”

Stars goalie Jake Oettinger has been a central topic for internal discussions when it comes to travel and practice and usage. Two years ago, Oettinger hit a wall in the postseason. It impacted his play and contributed to injuries that spilled into the 2023-24 season.

When the Stars lost in the Western Conference Final this past spring, Oettinger was outplayed by Edmonton Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner.

While it’s on Oettinger to raise his game, Nill said it’s on the Stars staff – both coaching and sports science – to work on making sure he has the best tools available to do so.

So Oettinger will practice less, and when he does practice, Nill said Stars goalie coach Jeff Reese will focus on making sure the wear-and-tear on the body is limited.

Frankly speaking, that’s one of the reasons NHL goalies don’t play nearly as many games as they used to. The position is more physically demanding, and goalies use their posts as launch points and landing pads more than in the past. Watch some footage from Marty Turco or Ed Belfour; you never see them slamming their hips into the post the way modern goalies do today.

“I give Jeff Reese a lot of credit for standing up to the goalies on that,” Nill said. “He’s the one that really looked at it and said, ‘We can’t have our goalies banging into the post like this all day, every practice. It’s going to take a toll.’”