Stars hungry to make most of rare opportunity, win Stanley Cup

The video clip captured the spirit of the bubble, the Stanley Cup Playoffs and these Dallas Stars.

Here they were Monday, their 51st day isolated in a hotel and an arena because of the coronavirus pandemic, in the locker room after defeating the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference Final.
Goalie Anton Khudobin received a chain with a Stars logo to put around his neck as hero of Game 5, a 3-2 overtime win in which Dallas came back from down 2-0 in the third period. The players cheered.
"Speech!" some players said.
The room went quiet.
"We're not going home!" Khudobin bellowed.
The players cheered again.

Dallas will play in the Stanley Cup Final against the Tampa Bay Lightning, who advanced with a 2-1 overtime win against the New York Islanders in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Final on Thursday. Game 1 of the Cup Final is at Rogers Place in Edmonton, the hub city for the conference finals and Cup Final, on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, SN, TVAS).
"I think you reach this point, and the only option is to win," Stars forward Andrew Cogliano said Thursday. "I think we have a lot of guys on our team that are very hungry to do that, guys that have been in Dallas for a long time and guys that have been playing in the League for a while on other good teams that haven't won. … It's time for us to really push ourselves to make that next step."
General manager Jim Nill was in the front office when the Detroit Red Wings won four championships, in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008, but waited for years for the right time to become a GM and has been working since 2013 to get the Stars to this point.
Coach Rick Bowness played 173 NHL games as a center from 1975-82 and has been behind the bench for more than 2,500 NHL games in various roles since 1984-85. He has made the Cup Final twice, as an associate with the Vancouver Canucks in 2011 and an assistant with the Lightning in 2015. Each time, he lost.
"I've only been there a couple times," Bowness said Thursday. "You get to that Stanley Cup Finals, man, it stays with you the rest of your life. It's painful."
Forward Jamie Benn, the captain, has been with the Stars since 2009-10. His first four seasons, and seven of his first nine, they didn't make the Stanley Cup Playoffs. This is not only his first appearance in the Cup Final, it's his first time past the second round.

Center Tyler Seguin won the Cup with the Boston Bruins as a rookie in 2011 and went to the Final with them in 2013 but was a young player on a veteran team each time. He has been trying to get back there with the Stars since 2013-14.
Forward Corey Perry won the Cup with the Anaheim Ducks in 2007. He was 22 then, in his second NHL season. In 12 more seasons in Anaheim, he never made the Cup Final again. He signed with Dallas as a free agent July 1, 2019.
Forward Joe Pavelski spent 13 seasons with the San Jose Sharks and made the Cup Final once, losing to the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016. He signed with Dallas the same day Perry did.
"You're looking at two guys who have been around the League a long time, and they've only recently been to the Finals once," Bowness said. "Well, that's how hard it is to get here. So you know they're going to be digging down as deep as they can to take another run at the Stanley Cup."
Go down the list. Two more examples:
Khudobin has bounced from team to team and league to league over the course of his 13-season professional career. He's supposed to be the backup for the Stars but has become the starter with Ben Bishop unfit to play. This is his first shot at the Cup.
Cogliano has played 1,106 NHL games in the regular season and playoffs combined. Before this, the closest he had come to the Cup Final was two trips to the conference final with Anaheim. The Ducks lost to the Chicago Blackhawks in seven games in 2015 and to the Nashville Predators in six in 2017.
He said Monday brought out lots of emotion.
"It was a moment where I really felt something inside that I've been missing for a while, and it was pretty cool," Cogliano said. "… It was something that I will never forget as a hockey player and probably the highest, at this point, moment of my career."
Imagine if the Stars go home with the Cup.
"I really feel like we have a really hungry team to make this happen," Cogliano said. "I think we've proven that over the course of the playoffs when we've been down in situations and when things haven't gone our way, and from young guys to old guys and from the coaching staff, I think our whole organization really wants to, like I said, put everything we got out there for this last series."