Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
So they meet again.
In what has become an annual May tradition, the Texas Stars find themselves matching up with the Milwaukee Admirals in the Calder Cup Playoffs. The two Central Division powers will stage a postseason meeting for the third consecutive year, and the fifth time overall. Texas hosts Game 1 of the best-of-five series tonight and Game 2 on Sunday before the rest of the series moves to Milwaukee.
The Stars owe the Admirals some payback after Milwaukee eliminated them the last two years. In 2023, the teams alternated wins before the Admirals took the deciding Game 5 on Texas’ home ice. In 2024, the Stars captured the opening two contests before Milwaukee took three consecutive home wins.
The ties between the clubs run deep. Admirals head coach Karl Taylor spent four years as an assistant coach with the Stars, helping them to the 2018 Calder Cup Finals. His assistant, Greg Rallo, played five seasons in three separate stints with Texas. Goaltender Matt Murray was on the losing side of the rivalry in 2023; he joined the Nashville organization last summer and earned a spot on the AHL Second All-Star Team. They know each other very well, having played 34 games head-to-head since the start of the 2022-23 season.
They have won the last three Central Division titles, Texas finishing in first place in 2022-23 and Milwaukee doing the honors each of the last two seasons. The Admirals edged the Stars by two points this year, with two victories in Cedar Park on Apr. 5-6 helping make that happen.
Both teams are also perennial postseason participants. The Admirals, who migrated to the AHL in 2001, won the Calder Cup in 2004 and went back to the Finals two years later. They are coming off back-to-back trips to the Western Conference Finals. The Stars made the Finals in their inaugural 2009-10 season, won the Cup in 2014 and got all the way to Game 7 of the championship round in 2018.
Head coach Neil Graham has long-standing ties to the Dallas Stars organization. He joined their ECHL affiliate Idaho in 2012 as an assistant coach, became a head coach there, and advanced to Texas to become an assistant before taking over the top job early in the 2019-20 season.
These teams also enjoy long-standing and productive NHL affiliations, have strong fan support, and run successful operations on and off the ice. Both teams have sent one wave of talent after another to their respective parent teams. There is a strong…
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