A new year means a new sense of optimism surrounding the Dallas Cowboys. This past season is one that everyone would like wiped clean of their memory.

The final year of the Mike McCarthy era ended in a whimper. Although, we hate to use injuries as an excuse, but the Cowboys’ sideline looked like the Tune Squad after the first half of their game against the Monstars in ‘Space Jam’.

However, it is a new year, new me mentality with America’s Team, and the hope is that first-year head coach Brian Schottenheimer will right the ship.

Brian Schottenheimer taking extra measures to strengthen bonds off the field

It won’t be easy getting the Cowboys back on top. The NFC East grew leaps and bounds last season, with the NFC Championship being between two teams from the division.

Recently, Loc Scataglia from NFL Spin Zone ranked every NFL division heading into the 2025 season. To no surprise, the NFC East was one of the top divisions in Scataglia’s rankings.

“The 2024 NFL Season saw the NFC Championship Game played by two teams in the NFC East, but the main issue here is that the two other teams are quite bad. The Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants have to figure themselves out, as this division is obviously only a two-horse race with the Eagles and Commanders,” wrote Scataglia, who has the NFC East as the fourth toughest division heading into the 2025 season.

If healthy, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Cowboys have a great first season under Schottenheimer.

However, winning this division will take more than health this season.

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First Shift 🏒

Maybe the best thing about the Stars’ ability to deal with adversity is that they handle change very well.

Heiskanen in? No problem, we’ll try seven defensemen. Seguin back? Shuffle the lines. Robertson trying to find a niche when his spot gets taken by Mikael Granlund during a playoff injury absence? Well, we’ll work it out.

So with Roope Hintz possibly returning for Game 4 after missing Game 3, the Stars seem more than equipped to handle whatever happens. Hintz skated in warmup for Game 3, but didn’t play. As a result, Granlund moved to center and Robertson jumped from the fourth line to the first. While Dallas lost a 6-1 game, the analytics of the moves were surprisingly successful. Robertson had five shots on goal and tallied his first goal of the playoffs. Meanwhile, the reshuffled fourth line of Steel with Colin Blackwell and Oskar Bäck combined for eight shots on goal in about 13 minutes of ice time.

“It’s next man up,” said Granlund. “You just adjust.”

Hintz skated at practice Monday in Edmonton and looked good. However, he still has to go through a morning skate on Tuesday and the Stars then probably won’t make a final decision until after the pregame warm-up.

“Heal and get better and cross our fingers and try it again in warmups,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said Monday.

Hintz, who received a slash from Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse in Game 2 on the top of his skate and suffered a “lower body injury,” said he is optimistic.

“The biggest thing right now for me is to just worry about what I can do that I can be able to play tomorrow,” Hintz said after practice. “You want to play every game, especially in the playoffs. Every game is so important. Sometimes sports are what they are. I’m now trying everything that I can so tomorrow I am able to play.”

If Hintz comes back in, there is the thought he would center Granlund and Rantanen, as he has for much of the playoffs. Could that change what Robertson is doing? Would the coaches put Robertson back on the fourth line or is there a better spot for him?

“They just made that adjustment and I had to step up,” Robertson said of Game 3. “It’s up to everybody to step up.”

In addition to finding a spot for Robertson if Hintz returns, DeBoer and company will have to look at the fourth line. Because of the health of the team in recent games, the traditional fourth line hasn’t been together as much. But the trio of Steel, Blackwell and Bäck had some real success during the regular season and early in the playoffs. Could they earn a spot in Game 4 while a more regular forward gets a healthy scratch?

“They were great last night,” DeBoer said. “If every time we got them together and played them, they played like that…we wouldn’t have broken them up. They gave us some great juice last night and if we get them back out there together, whether that’s tomorrow night or the next night, we need the same thing.”

And while the fourth line can help tilt the ice, the Stars do need someone to score goals. They have one in the past two games against Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner and have scored just 10 in seven road games (1.42 per game) in the postseason. So whatever they do with the potential return of Hintz, they have to find a way to score more goals.

“I think last night was one of our better games,” said forward Wyatt Johnston. “We can do a better job of finishing. No matter who you are playing, you want to get bodies in front of the goalie and make life difficult for him.”

The Stars have done that before. They won Game 7 against Colorado with a four-goal third period and had five goals in the third against Edmonton in Game 1. They have been able to raise their offensive game when the need has been there.

“It’s 2-1 in the series and we still have an opportunity to get one on the road,” Robertson said. “So I don’t think there’s any frustration. We know what we have to do.”

Tennis is considered the world’s healthiest sport, and something good happened on the tennis courts in Coppell.

Players competed in the 45th Texas Open Wheelchair Championships earlier this month. The Dallas Wheelchair Tennis Club (DWTC) hosted the event at the Wagon Wheel Tennis and Pickleball Center in Coppell. The championship tournament was started in 1981 and is the oldest, continuously held tournament in the history of wheelchair tennis.

The U.S. Tennis Association backs the Dallas club and recently awarded it a $3,500 grant to help further the program. The USTA distributed $100,000 in grants to 56 wheelchair tennis programs nationwide.

“They’ve been stalwarts in the wheelchair tennis world for so many years. Dallas has been an incredible city for wheelchair tennis for the better part of three or four decades,” said Jason Harnett, the director of wheelchair tennis at Florida-based USTA.

Wheelchair Tennis was founded in 1976 when Brad Parks first hit a tennis ball from a wheelchair and realized the potential of this new sport. Wheelchair tennis became a full medal sport at the Paralympics in 1992. Since 2007, wheelchair tennis has been played at all four Grand Slams.

“Paralympic sport is so compelling. The back stories of the athletes and how they got there, and then of course, just the athleticism and the professionalism are at the top level,” Harnett said. “And I’ve worked both sides of the fence, professional, able-bodied, and Paralympic, and to me the Paralympic side is more compelling and in some ways, because of again, the adversity to get to where they’re at is, is remarkable,” Harnett said.

The mayor of Coppell presented DWTC club president Charles (Carlos) Turic with a proclamation declaring May as National Tennis Month. The city councils in Keller and Midlothian passed proclamations as well.

The DWTC has partnerships with the City of Coppell (Wagon Wheel Tennis & Pickleball Center) and SMU Tennis (Styslinger/Altec Tennis Complex), where we host our weekly tennis clinics. The Dallas Wheelchair Tennis Club can be contacted at 972-317-7972 or DWTCPresident@aol.com.

The USTA says:
• Tennis participation in the U.S. has surged to a new high of 25.7 million players following five consecutive years of growth. The nearly two million player increase from 2023 (up 1.9 million from 23.8 million) marks a significant acceleration in excess of eight percent growth.
• One in every 12 Americans played tennis in 2024 – the highest proportion on record. This exceeds the five-year average ratio of one in 16 Americans.
• The game is increasingly more diverse, with 26 percent growth in Black / African American participation, representing a 662,000-player increase, and Hispanic players up 15.4 percent, to 4.54 million players over 2023. Senior players, too, are on the rise with a 17 percent increase in growth to 302K participants.
• Tennis is also increasingly attracting a younger player base as players under 35 powered tennis’s expansion in 2024, contributing nearly two-thirds of all growth (+1.2 million players). The youth influence is especially clear among those under 25, who drove 45 percent of total gains.