The fact that they have such a good chance of making the playoffs even without Klingberg shouldn't be lost on them. They have a serious advantage with games played over Vegas, Vancouver, and Winnipeg, and Vegas' core for the most part is legitimately broken and on the shelf.
It's far from a guarantee, but they're in the mix with or without Klingberg.
I think it says a lot that Vegas has $27M on IR and LTIR right now and Dallas can barely edge them out, if at all. The Stars solidly have the advantage because the games in hand are huge, but they've lost ground and have had an incredibly healthy season. All it took was one top player out for the team to fall down like a house of cards.
This season has been fairly blessed, it's been a near best-case-scenario in the sense that the team has been so healthy... and it's bubble hockey all over again. Without Miro so far it's been 3-4-0, 1 regulation win, and frankly they're lucky it looks that good. I could see them being around the same place next year with better coaching, but worse depth and luck, but like you've mentioned, keeping or not keeping Klingberg probably isn't the difference. I guess you squeezed one last really good win out of him, count yourself lucky and move on.
There's optimism to be had for the mid to long term future of the team if they play their cards right, but with the current direction they could very well slip out of being a bubble team next year and I wouldn't be surprised.
It's probably futile, but I hope they lose this one in convincing fashion, it's the last piece of evidence they'll have before buckling down for the trade deadline, and for better or for worse, they seem very reactionary to short term results instead of the long term trends. I can't really see it, though, Nill could very well get fired for missing and he's not one for risk taking.
