Dallas Stars Are Skidding But Should Just Keep Swimming
Like Dory says, we want the Dallas Stars to just keep swimming through their most recent disappointments. But it seems like they just keep skidding instead. What’s going on and how can it be fixed?
Even when things go your way, sometimes things still don’t go your way, you know? Well, even if you don’t, the Dallas Stars do. They’ve been riding- and dragging us along with them- on a veritable hockey rollercoaster. Pulling out narrow wins one moment, robbed by bad luck of other wins, letting even more wins slip through their fingers as a result of underwhelming play.
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Blackout Dallas 21hDallas Stars Suffer From Bad Luck, Fall to Oilers 5-2
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Through all of this, the Stars have still had compartmentalized success. Slowly but surely, even as more players have disappeared from the roster, some have been added back.
The Stars are still figuring out how valuable some of their scoring depth is. Radek Faksa, Devin Shore, Brett Ritchie, and Gemel Smith have been coming into their own. After missing 14 games with a concussion, Patrick Sharp returned to play last night, with Cody Eakin also back in play after a knee injury.
In their absence, Jamie Benn, Tyler Seguin, Antoine Roussel, and recently Jason Spezza have also been holding down the fort.
However, individual good night don’t translate to good corporate nights all the time. The loss to the Oilers last night was a puck luck problem, with a majority of the opponent’s goals coming from unlucky bounces. Even though the Stars continue to improve on their power play, five on five is where the bulk of their bad luck has been lying.
At this point, what do the Stars need to snap them out of it? Who’s to say, really? When turnovers and neutral ice sloppiness was the culprit, some of us called for the scratching of John Klingberg; although he had some bad luck with the puck last night, he also led the Stars in ice time.
Then again, perhaps it’s the pressure of trying to live up to last season and everyone’s expectations for this one. Trying to scale that ever-steepening mountain, all the while losing players left and right to injury, is bound to be the cause of some issues for Dallas.
But then again, who knows for sure? It’s a bit like trying to treat an illness- there may be multiple causes influencing each other to create the current effect.
So what’s to be done now? More line shuffling? A little more tough love in practices? What do you think the culprit of the Stars’ current state is, and what should they do to stop the skid? Let us know below in the comments.
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