Wayne Gretzky was less than a decade removed from winning four Stanley Cups in Edmonton, so when he took the ice for a puck drop before a Stars-Oilers playoff game at Edmonton Coliseum in the late ‘90s, I watched and listened as delirium ensued.

It’s a bit quieter a generation later when The Great One speaks on the TNT studio broadcast, but when a man has 894 goals and 2,857 points to his credit, you might as well listen. And he didn’t exactly speak to fire up his old Oilers team Wednesday night.

”I think the Stars are gonna sit back in the locker room and say, ‘We don’t want to come back to Edmonton, we win tonight and we take this thing home.’ They’re going to come out hard in the first period,’’ Gretzky said.

Just 5 1/2 minutes into the first period of Game 4, Dallas had grabbed a 2-0 lead. The NHL’s best road team, one that had no trouble limiting high-scoring Colorado to one goal in each of the three games played in Denver the last round, was riding high.

Now The Great One did not have much to say regarding what might come later. And at the end of two periods, the Oilers had outshot Dallas 24-14, held a 4-2 advantage, sent two Stars down the tunnel in the second period — forward Mason Marchment (puck to the face) and defenseman Chris Tanev (puck to the unpadded leg) — and taken charge of Game 4. The Period of the Long Change had become the Period of the Long Series.

Marchment returned for the third period but Tanev, the trade deadline acquisition hailed by many as the best in the league who was so instrumental in keeping Jack Eichel and Nathan MacKinnon from killing this team the first two rounds, did not. As a result, Dallas lost a 5-2 game that included a late empty-netter. The Oilers were the first playoff team to score five unanswered goals on Dallas since Vegas won the Western Conference finals clincher 6-0 in Dallas last May.

Although the series will be tied at 2-2 when the puck drops Friday at the AAC — same as it was for Game 5 against Vegas about a month ago — this has to be a worrisome turn of events. As is so often the case in the Stanley Cup playoffs, all the things we thought we had learned from two straight Dallas wins pretty much got upended at Rogers Place on Wednesday.

Like the Oilers can’t score on the power play. Who cares? Neither can Dallas. And Edmonton took the lead in the middle of the second period on the series’ first special teams goal, a short-handed swipe by former Stars forward Mattias Janmark. When Leon Draisaitl knocked in his 10th goal of the playoffs just 51 seconds later, the Oilers had turned Dallas’ two-goal lead on its head and carried the 4-2 advantage into the final period.

Or like Dallas’ road mystique will carry the club. Suddenly a 6-1 record away from the AAC is a 6-2 record that doesn’t scare anybody in Edmonton.

On this night there was no pushback from the Stars. In Game 3, the Stars had erupted from a 2-0 deficit to strike three times in a span of 3:33 to gain control of the game. In Game 4 … a lot of nothing. Not even any great chances to speak of. Heck, the biggest save of the night was made by Jake Oettinger’s stick after he had completely lost it and it deflected a Connor McDavid shot deep in the crease.

In two nights in Edmonton, the Oilers scored eight goals without a drop from the league’s finest power play. They won Game 1 in Dallas without a power play goal. Although the regular season numbers favor Dallas, we know Edmonton got off to a terrible start the first 20 games before recording the most points in the last three-fourths of the season. The sense that Dallas has the edge in goal with Oettinger over Stuart Skinner still hangs in the air … but it hasn’t always meant much in these Western Conference finals and was completely irrelevant Wednesday.

What comes next? Jason Robertson broke out with a hat trick in Game 3 but Dallas’ top line of Roope Hintz, Tyler Seguin and Robo fired blanks Wednesday night. Nothing has been easy or quick for the Stars, taking seven games to knock off the Golden Knights and another six to vanquish Colorado. This one will go at least six and the dead-even nature of the series suggests the team that’s down after Game 5 will find a way to push on to Game 7.

Maybe then the Stars can ride Pete DeBoer’s 8-0 record in seventh games one more time to reach the Cup Final. History isn’t always the best card to play, but when your scoring and power play are inconsistent and your defense has just taken another hit, you hang onto any cards at your disposal.

On X/Twitter: @TimCowlishaw

Find more Stars coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

The Dallas Stars have been a postseason mainstay over the last six years, reaching the NHL playoffs in five of those seasons. During that span, however, they’ve been unsuccessful in winning the Stanley Cup, despite making an appearance in the Final in 2020.

They’re hopeful of changing those fortunes this season. Currently embroiled in a Western Conference Final tilt against the Edmonton Oilers, Dallas is looking to make it back to the Stanley Cup Final and win what would be just the second title in franchise history, dating back to their time as the Minnesota North Stars.

Let’s take a look back at the Stars’ championship season, as well as their appearances in the Stanley Cup Final throughout history.

The lone championship in Stars history came 25 years ago during the 1998–99 season, when they defeated the Buffalo Sabres in the Stanley Cup Final. They won the series in six games, which featured a legendary triple overtime thriller in the closeout Game 6 that saw Hall of Fame right winger Brett Hull seal the deal with the game-winning goal after nearly two full hours of game time.

It’s one of the most iconic moments in franchise history. That Dallas team was loaded, with five players who would eventually reach the Hall of Fame, including Hull, Mike Modano, Joe Nieuwendyk, Sergei Zubov and Guy Carbonneau.

Although they’ve only won one Stanley Cup, the Stars have made five total trips to the Finals. The first came back in 1981, back when the team was still playing out of Minnesota. Then the North Stars, the team was defeated by the New York Islanders in a five-game series.

They returned to the Stanley Cup Final a decade later, despite finishing fourth in their division with a 27–39–14 record. The team made a stunning postseason run before being bested in six games at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Their next trip to the Stanley Cup Final was in 1999, when they won against the Sabres. The team made another Stanley Cup Final run in 2000, but were defeated in a six-game set against the New Jersey Devils.

Dallas’s last and most recent run to the championship came in 2020, when they were defeated in six games by the Tampa Bay Lightning. Much of that team, including the likes of Tyler Seguin, Joe Pavelski, Jamie Benn, Roope Hintz and Miro Heiskanen, among many others, remain on the roster in 2024, eager to finish the job they fell just short of four years ago.

• I recently flew four hours from New York to Texas on a Delta Air Lines Airbus A220 in economy.
• The smaller aircraft has Delta’s usual seatback screens, power, and WiFi but fewer middle seats.
• My flight was comfortable and on time, and I finally saw the A220’s funky lavatory window.

Delta Air Lines has always been my go-to carrier.

I regularly flew the airline to and from Atlanta growing up, and now take advantage of its huge hubs at my nearby New York City area airports.

Other airlines are starting to grow on me, but my dozens of Delta flights over the years have been on time, and I appreciate its large network and consistency in terms of product and customer service.