Sign in Subscribe
Front Page

Dallas Stars Daily Links: Poor Start, Poor Finish

Sloppy penalties in the first and a lack of offense in the third led to the Stars’ Game 2 loss. Plus, the NHL handed out the rest of its awards last night, the Draft is right around the corner, and more.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before — the Dallas Stars had penalty troubles last night.

A lack of discipline has been a running theme this postseason, and it was no different in their Game 2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Stars gave the Lightning three power play opportunities in the first period, two of which led to goals against:

“That’s where we lost the game today. We don’t want to take penalties,” Mattias Janmark said. “We have taken way too many throughout the playoffs, but when we get them, we’ve just got to go out and kill them. We didn’t manage to do that today, and I think that’s where they won the game. We’ve got to do a better job there.”

The Stars responded with a strong second period and looked good to start the third, but all progress came to a halt after Janmark scored the second goal. Despite still trailing by one, the Stars failed to do much of anything on offense:

“I think we felt good about our game, but obviously we need to shoot the puck to score goals,” [John] Klingberg said. “We probably need to put more pucks to the net as well, but yeah, it’s too soon for me to say. I need to see that on video but you got to shoot the puck to score goals.”

You can read more from Sean Shapiro’s 20/20 here.

Stars Stories

Here’s Rick Bowness on where his team fell short last night:

Here’s Klingberg and Joe Pavelski...

...and here’s Janmark and Roope Hintz:

If the Stars have officially awoken the beast that is Nikita Kucherov, they might be in trouble:

Around the League

Outside of Game 2, the biggest news from lasts night were the NHL Awards. Here are the cliff notes:

  • Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisaitil took home both the Hart Trophy for most valuable player and Ted Lindsay Award for most outstanding player, making him the first German to win either.
  • Meanwhile Nashville Predators captain Roman Josi took home the first Norris Trophy for best defenseman win of his eight year career.
  • Here’s yet another first: Connor Hellebuyck of the Winnipeg Jets won the Vezina Trophy for best goaltender.
  • And finally, the Calder Trophy — an award that has to go to a first-timer — was awarded to Cale Makar of the Colorado Avalanche as the NHL’s best rookie./

Here’s the NHL First All-Star team:

On the subject of awards, why do voters tend to stick with forwards for the Hart but not the Conn Smythe Trophy? Down Goes Brown offers his five cents:

Moving on, here is a wild look at life inside the NHL Bubble:

The NHL Draft is officially two weeks away, if you can believe it. Get yourself reacquainted with the top prospects heading in:

Finally...

We have a series, folks.

Read next