The Dallas Stars leadership group needed to step up after loss to the Lightning

This is a conversation that, I’m hoping, we can have with a bit of nuance.

Last night the Dallas Stars lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2 in a shootout.

The Stars were outplayed and couldn’t get the job done, which has become a common theme in the past six games against fellow Stanley Cup contending teams like the Edmonton Oilers, Winnipeg Jets, Colorado Avalanche, and now Lightning.

Stars coach Pete DeBoer was unhappy after the game, he delivered a 94-second press conference, where any and all positives were quickly reverted back to the larger point — the Stars didn’t show up in a measuring stick game.

Peter DeBoer storms out of press conference after the overtime loss to the Bolts.

(Take 1 minute and 34 seconds to listen) 😳#TexasHockey | @DLLS_Sports pic.twitter.com/CpVGWpIY68

— DLLS Stars (@DLLS_Stars) March 21, 2025

But before DeBoer spoke, when the Stars had player availability, Oskar Bäck, Lian Bichsel, and Mason Marchment were brought out to the media.

Bäck played quite well, the Stars fourth line was about the only line that did anything at even strength. Bichsel played his game, he antagonized the Lightning and was one of the bright spots on a defense that was bailed out time after time by Casey DeSmith. Marchment scored a power-play goal, and amongst the Stars forwards, was one of the few that actually had a passing night.

For those three players, it was effectively a no-win situation with the media.

They played well, they weren’t the reason the team lost, but any question about Bichsel’s hits or Bäck’s goal are more deserving of footnotes than being the headline. The real question, the one that DeBoer talked about, is why the Stars best players didn’t show up, why they didn’t set a tone or make a difference against the Lightning.

And that’s who should have been speaking after the game, the players who could and should make a difference and didn’t.

This is where I’m pleading for nuance, because otherwise this is going to get messy and the message might get lost. And it’s one of the reasons I’m writing about it on Friday morning after going on a bit of a rant on the DLL Stars postgame show last night.

Jamie Benn isn’t a media darling. At the heart of it, dealing with media is his least favorite part of the job. But it is part of the job of an NHL captain. Wearing the “C” comes with an expectation to stand up for your teammates, deal with the criticism and praise altogether.

The captain gets the loudest cheers in pre-game announcements, and he gets the cushy social media love, including from this publication. That’s all well and good and as long as you stand in and deliver when things are difficult.

Benn has failed in this regard multiple times in his career. He’s been curt and short with media members, and when he famously effectively ended the Stars season against the Vegas Golden Knights two seasons ago with a cross check to Mark Stone’s neck, his lack of media and public awareness was on full display.

The Stars know this about Benn, and it’s one of the reasons he’s been surrounded by lieutenants that can take the public challenges for him. Tyler Seguin has been Benn’s perfect foil for years, Joe Pavelski was the guy in the past who understood how to speak about a game like the one last night, Benn would be notably absent, but at least someone in the leadership corps was speaking.

Seguin is injured, he can’t speak for what happened. Pavelski is retired and living his best life in Wisconsin. The Stars leadership group surrounding Benn now consists of Miro Heiskanen (also injured), Roope Hintz, Esa Lindell, Matt Duchene, and Wyatt Johnston.

Someone from that group, even if they weren’t requested, needed to speak up last night. That’s one of those moments, where someone from leadership should have seen the numbers 6, 27, and 10 written on the whiteboard and said, “it’s not on those guys to answer for our mistakes.”

That could have been Benn, it could have been one of his alternates. But it needed to be somebody, especially when their coach was loaded with vitriol soon after.

In hockey culture, we preach accountability over and over and over. It’s nauseating at times. But there are many times, publicly, where that accountability gets lost in a media landscape.

Someone had a chance to step up, do the public-facing part of the job last night, and they didn’t. And while those media availabilities can be rough, they also protect the rest of the team and allow a group to actually move onto the next game.

I’m writing this column now, and questions will be asked today after practice because the proper people didn’t stand up to speak on Thursday night. This game wouldn’t have been a dead issue, far from it, but it would have at least moved on within the media landscape, and even if was just a collection of short one-word answers, leadership showing up would have protected the rest of the group from questions about it permeating from media today at practice in the locker room.