Sometimes it feels as though we live in the age of contrived sports milestones. Every game is the first time this happened, the 10th time that happened or a player is joining some long list of accomplishments that no one ever really thought about.
Jamie Benn’s night was different from that Monday. Or at least it was set up to be different. The 33-year-old team captain became the second player in franchise history, joining the revered Mike Modano, to play 1,000 games entirely in the Stars organization. And while doing it in a difficult 3-2 overtime win — this one over the lowly Anaheim Ducks — Benn actually broke into a smile when his achievement was recognized in the first period.
After a week off, the first-place Stars’ fans were ready to cheer and celebrate and the Ducks — the last-place team in the Pacific Division with an appalling minus-80 in goal differential — were supposed to provide the easy fodder. Defenseman Nils Lundkvist got the scoring started in the first period, and Roope Hintz made it 2-0 in the second after a nice steal from Denis Gurianov. The club’s leading goal scorer, Jason Robertson, had two big scoring chances in the second period but a breakaway shot caught the crossbar and then goaltender John Gibson, a busy man with 41 Stars shots on goal Monday, made the necessary stop on a backhand.
Those failures caught up with Dallas when Jakob Silfverberg and Adam Henrique scored third-period goals for the Ducks. When the horn for regulation sounded, it assured Dallas of its fourth straight 3-2 overtime decision. The last three were losses to Eastern Conference foes. Finally, Dallas grabbed a win Monday when Tyler Seguin scored the game-winner in a shootout.
Some of the loudest cheers came barely six minutes into the game when Benn, seated on the Dallas bench, was recognized for reaching the 1,000-game mark. At first, Benn tried to get by with a quick wave to the crowd while still seated. Eventually, he stood up — ever so briefly — and acknowledged the cheers that continued. By the end he actually broke into a broad smile, which he mostly guards from public view, especially if any kind of fuss is being made over him.
Benn hit the 1,000-game mark the way any player wants to. He’s not only captain of a first-place team in the Western Conference but he has rediscovered a lost scorer’s touch in his 14th NHL season. Eight years ago Benn became the only Star ever to win the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s top scorer.
But age and all those hits take a toll and even last year, when Benn played all 82 games for the first time in four years, he finished with just 46 points. This season with 30 games to go, he has 44 points. He’s on pace for his first 60-point season in five years and needs just one more goal to enjoy his first 20-goal season in four years. Benn became the third Star ever to reach 800 points, joining Modano and Neal Broten earlier this season.
On top of that, Benn captains a team that has at times been something of a machine under new coach Pete DeBoer (that’s Benn’s fifth Stars coach as captain and seventh since he made his debut in 2009). With 30 games remaining, Dallas holds a three-point lead on Winnipeg for the top spot in the Central Division and has a solid chance of finishing as the top seed in the West. After years of missing the playoffs or fighting their way in as a wild card, the Stars have everything in place from the goaltending on out to contend for the Stanley Cup that has eluded Dallas for more than two decades.
Derian Hatcher was the Stars long-time captain who received the Cup from Commissioner Gary Bettman back in 1999, and Benn passed Hatcher this season with his 10th season of wearing the “C’ for Dallas. If that occasionally felt like something that was bestowed on a formerly great player in recent years, Benn has revived his game even without playing on the club’s top line — one that he and Seguin resided on for years.
It’s worth mentioning that Modano enjoyed his eighth and final 80-point season with Dallas the year he crossed the 1,000-game threshold. Benn is obviously a different type of forward, one whose physical game has taken its toll on his hips and legs but still manages to deliver in short-handed situations, on the power play and wherever he is needed. Benn hitting the 1,000-game mark in a season that might include 30 goals and a first-place finish offered Stars fans all they could ask for as the team returned from an all-star break week off.
Now it’s back to work. Few pursue it as relentlessly as the only captain that Lindy Ruff, Ken Hitchcock (second installment), Jim Montgomery, Rick Bowness and DeBoer have known in Dallas.
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