It’s happened far too many times this season. In fact, it’s a tired narrative for a lot of Dallas Stars fans this year. You know the one I’m talking about.
The “we outplayed them and deserved to win, but lost” refrain. It happened again Friday night against the Edmonton Oilers, all but ending any chance of the Stars returning to the playoffs.
What do the numbers say about how the Stars played?
Dallas dominated every period in shot attempts and the only time it was ever close was the first 15 seconds of the game.
In these posts, I will also be including a chart that shows scoring chances. Scoring chances are loosely defined as shots generated from inside the black outlined area below.
Scoring chances were also dominated by the Stars. The first period was the Stars’ weakest overall, but they still were the better of the two teams.
Leaders for the Stars in individual scoring chances were Cody Eakin (9), Brett Ritchie (6), Jamie Benn (4) and Tyler Seguin (4).
In these posts, you will also see a few abbreviations and terms used.
CF, CA, C+/- and CF% are Corsi For, Corsi Against, and Corsi For Percentage. They are defined as follows,
Corsi For: The number of on-ice shot attempts (on goal, missed, or blocked) taken by the player’s team.
Corsi Against: The number of on-ice shot attempts (on goal, missed, or blocked) taken by the opposing team.
Corsi%: The percentage of on-ice shot attempts (on goal, missed, or blocked) taken by the player’s team; also known as CF%.
Individually, it was a pretty solid night for most of the boys in white. Colton Sceviour was the only player to fall below 50%.
Yes, the Stars were the better of the two teams all night. Better in every statistic measure except the one that counts, goals. The inability to execute on prime opportunities has haunted the Stars many times this year and Friday night was no different.
If you were one still holding out hope for the playoffs then last night was a real tough loss. If you’ve already accepted the fact that the season was over and were just enjoying finally getting to see a glimpse of how good this team can be, then last night was easier to stomach.
Playoffs or not, I just hope the Stars rebound and continue their recent stretch of solid play.
Graphs and numbers taken from War-on-Ice and hockeystats.ca