Were Not Going Home: How one man put together the Stars playoff documentary

This shouldn’t have been a one-man undertaking.

Documenting the Dallas Stars’ dramatic, improbable run to the Stanley Cup Final was a feat worthy of a large crew — at least a handful of cameramen and another group working on the back end.

And the finished product — “We’re Not Going Home: The 2020 Dallas Stars Playoff Run” — which will air on Thursday at 6 p.m. on Fox Sports Southwest and will be later posted to the Stars’ YouTube channel, looks like it was a massive undertaking with the prerequisite staffing. The Athletic was able to view an advanced copy of the documentary, which provides a behind-the-scenes look at the team’s game preparation and goes inside the locker room before and after the biggest moments of their improbable run to the Stanley Cup Final.

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From Stars goalie coach Jeff Reese breaking down opposing netminders on film to Stars coach Rick Bowness’ speeches between periods and in the lead-up to games to what the Stars’ veteran group said at the crucial moments, Stars senior producer Jeff Toates captured everything and whittled it down to create the resulting 57-minute documentary.

The journey began when each NHL team was required to bring one content creator into the Edmonton bubble. Toates was Dallas’, and he brought six cameras — a Sony FS5 for video, a Sony a7S IV, a Sony a7S II, two GoPros, and an additional Sony camcorder — with him, hoping to document history. While the documentary also includes footage from NHL broadcasts, Toates estimates that 90 percent of the footage seen in the documentary — culled from “hundreds of hours” of shooting — was captured on those six cameras over the course of the Stars’ extended stay in Edmonton.

“My thought going in and what I relayed to people at the Stars was we had to go past the first round for it to be a full piece,” Toates said. “If we had just gone there and had a tough round-robin and been bounced, it wouldn’t have been enough more than maybe a short YouTube piece.”

It wasn’t a short YouTube piece. The Stars did have a tough round robin, going 1-2-0, but pieced together a run that featured a dramatic comeback against the Calgary Flames plus upsets against the Colorado Avalanche and Vegas Golden Knights before injuries and a high-powered Tampa Bay Lightning team finally ended Dallas’ Cup pursuit in the Stanley Cup Final. Dallas became the scrappy team that could, and Toates was the fly on the wall with unfettered access to everything. Bowness, who had the interim tag removed from his head coach title because of this run, is one of the stars of the documentary, as his game prep and handling of human beings is a key focus throughout the program.

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“I think that’s one of the biggest takeaways people will have from this hour: that Bones is the man,” Toates said. “And I think it gives you a really good sense of how he handled the team through all this.”

Bowness’ trust in Toates, and therefore the team’s trust in Toates, is the reason we have this finished product. He was allowed to exist as a team member, not just a videographer who was there to capture some of the most important moments.

“If I was an outsider, someone who wasn’t part of the bubble group of 51, I wouldn’t have been able to get the footage I got,” Toates said. “There’s a trust that I think you can only build by being part of that group, which allowed me to have moments that, otherwise, I don’t think anyone would have been able to capture.”

We’ve been asked to not spoil the documentary, and we’ll respect that. But there are moments captured and unveiled from the immediate aftermath of the Stanley Cup Final that had never been shown before. They capture just how much this run meant and how much it hurt certain players to come so close to — and ultimately finish so far from — their dream.

Throughout his time in the bubble, Toates took a “shoot and ask questions later” approach, which works well in accumulating footage but made for a labor-intensive editing process. He admits he didn’t have much of a plan when approaching the editing process; he had key moments that needed to be included, but aside from that, it was a labor of diving through hundreds of hours of footage and piecing together a story.

“It’s a very inefficient method,” Toates said. “But my process is shoot everything, always be recording and figure it out later. It makes for a lot of work on the back end. Whereas someone else might be jotting down notes day by day and doing daily edits, mine was much more always be around and always rolling … We’ll piece the story together on the back end.”

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The Stars’ run in the bubble ended on Sept. 28 with a Game 6 loss to the Lightning. Two days later, Toates began the editing process, which took all of October and stretched into November.

Aside from some graphics help — particularly with the title sequence — everything is directed and edited by Toates, as the project lived on his computer without any outside review. When sending out an advanced copy, as he did to The Athletic, Toates was curious for feedback on the project.

One thing that stands out about the documentary and its style, similar to the Stars Open Ice videos that Toates has produced in the past, is there aren’t any talking heads or narration. Instead, the story is told by live events as they happen. Audio is organic or from Stars press conferences that Toates pulled off Zoom recordings.

“I think a lot of people would have done a narration or voice like that to tell this story, which is something I wanted to avoid,” Toates said. “I like driving the story with organic audio, and the overall feeling of this hour is kind of that you are just along for a ride with the team throughout all of this.”

It works well for the intended audience. While non-Stars fans or those who didn’t closely follow the run may miss out on some key moments, the setup sans narration provides an extra level to a playoff run —one that, while eventually unsuccessful, captured a fan base when the world needed a distraction during a pandemic.

And for one man with multiple cameras, someone who joked that he was the last member of the Stars traveling party, it’s an impressive finished product.

(Photo: Gerry Thomas-USA TODAY Sports)

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