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Dallas Stars Daily Links: Deja Vu

Posted on by Tyler Mair

It’s hard to believe that the 2019-20 NHL season began almost a whole year ago. It gets even crazier when you remember that the Dallas Stars looked horrible out of the gate, infamously going 1-7-1 over their first nine games.

Dallas managed to flip the script and play some of their best hockey for the next few months. Fittingly, that turn of events closely mirrors the Stars’ recent playoff success, which came after a long streak of losing to end the regular season and begin the playoff bubble;

“You go back, and we’ve been a streaky team all year,” [interim head coach Rick] Bowness said. “We had a terrible October, we recovered from that. We had a couple of bad stretches at the end. We recovered from that. We’ve been a streaky team all season in terms of team play and we’ve been a streaky team in terms of goal-scoring.”

“Streakiness” is typically considered a bad thing, but that’s not necessarily the case. When it comes to the playoffs, it’s not always the “best” team from that season who wins the Stanley Cup, but the team that’s playing their best at the time. And the Stars feel like they’re playing their best:

“The confidence was there in November,” Bowness said. “We went into every game expecting to win, and that’s our attitude right now. We go into every game and we expect to win. We know if we play the right way, play Dallas Stars hockey and stay with it regardless of the score, play the right way, eventually, good things are going to happen for you.”

You can read more from Matthew DeFranks here.

Stars Stories

If you like Anton Khudobin (and honestly, who doesn’t?), then you’ll love this wholesome story about he and his dad:

Are the Stars suddenly an offensive powerhouse? Apparently yes. Well, actually no. Maybe?

More audio clips to listen to — this time, Tyler Seguin on his weekly radio spot:

Around the League

No strangers to overtime, the Tampa Bay Lightning evened their series against the Boston Bruins with a 4-3 victory:

Coolest goal of the game? Well that came courtesy of Zach Bogosian and Plano native Blake Coleman:

After giving up five in Game 1, the Vancouver Canucks returned the favor with five goals of their own in route to a 5-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights:

Speaking of the Canucks, Down Goes Brown and James Mirtle debate the concept of “Canada’s Team”:

Moving on, we have our first trade of the kind-of-offseason, with the Toronto Maple Leafs sending Kasperi Kapanen to the Pittsburgh Penguins:

Long-time NHL defenseman Mike Green has announced that he is hanging up his skates:

Should he stay or should he go? Alex Pietrangelo opens up about his impending free agency:

Finally, here’s a look at COVID-19 testing inside the NHL bubble:

Talking Points