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Dallas Stars Daily Links: A Rough First Period

Although “rough” might be underselling it. Plus, some national media praise for the Stars, looking ahead to the 2020-21 season, and more.

Last night’s Dallas Stars game was bad. Or at least, more specifically, the first period was downright awful.

Seeing his first action in nine games, Ben Bishop was torn apart early and often. But don’t expect the Stars to blame their goalie for the loss:

“It looked like it was unfair what was going on in front of him,” Stars interim coach Rick Bowness said. “When you let guys just go to the net like that, I don’t know what you expect your goalie to do. Did he look fine? Yeah, he was moving. He looked sharp. Again, some of those goals, we just let guys walk in and tap it in.”

The Stars still have two more chances to eliminate the Colorado Avalanche, but they can’t afford to have such a sloppy opening yet again. The Stars need to come better prepared, and that starts with the coaching staff:

“We weren’t ready to play,” Bowness said. “We weren’t ready to compete. Point your fingers at me and then work your way down. Nobody was ready. To defend against that team, it takes hard work... We got outworked, we got outhustled. It starts with being ready to play. We weren’t.”

You can read more from Matthew DeFranks here.

Stars Stories

Sean Shapiro offers his thoughts on last night’s loss in his latest 20/20:

If you’re still wondering why Anton Khudobin didn’t get the start, here’s what Bowness had to say about his decision:

They didn’t exactly outgun the Avalanche last night, but otherwise Dallas has become quite the high-scoring team these playoffs. Somehow:

Here’s some more national love for the Stars, or more specifically love for Radek Faksa:

Around the League

Unlike the Stars, the Tampa Bay Lightning know how to close out a series in five games — they eliminated the Boston Bruins last night in a 3-2 double overtime win:

Approximately 10% of the hockey world was unproductive at work yesterday, thanks to Down Goes Brown’s latest roster-construction exercise:

Who’s on Conn Smythe watch? Matt Larkin has a certain Stars defenseman at the top of his list:

There is still plenty of playoff action remaining, but the NHL is still hard at work figuring out how to make a 2020-21 regular season work:

Finally, in case you didn’t know, hockey players are vulgar. Here are some more chirps from inside the Western bubble:

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