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Dallas Stars Daily Links: Underperformance

If the Stars want to be successful this season, they need their top forwards to step up. Plus, injury updates around the league, overreactions from Week 1, and more.

It’s still early, but narratives are already forming three games into the Dallas Stars’ season. At the top is a clear underperformance from the team’s top forwards, and they know it:

“We need to be better,” [Jamie] Benn said. “Especially myself. It’s a tough league and your best players have to be your best players, especially on the road.”

“Frustrating,” [Tyler] Seguin said. “I don’t think it’s too early to say your best players have to be your best players with our top couple of lines.”

Benn and Alexander Radulov have only a single assist in three games, while Seguin has none. Joe Pavelski scored against the Ottawa Senators on Sunday, but has otherwise has also been slow to start the season.

Beyond the scoresheet, there is also reason to criticize Benn for taking himself out of the action on Sunday. The team’s captain fought with Josh Brown in a meaningless fight, hurting the Stars for those five minutes:

As entertaining as the fight was to watch, it’s irrelevant who won the bout between Benn and Brown because Brown and the Senators won the sequence... if Benn is going to fight just to fight, it needs to at least be in his paygrade and take out somebody from the other team who carries the same weight as Benn does for the Stars. If the best players need to be the best players, they need to play, not sit in the penalty box.

You can read more from Saad Yousuf here.

Stars Stories

Here’s the more optimistic/PR friendly approach from Mike Heika:

Radek Faksa will have to fork over some cash thanks to his slash on Tim Stützle:

Around the League

Nikita Kucherov was injured this weekend, and the early diagnosis is not good:

Meanwhile the Pittsburgh Penguins are waiting for their own star Russian — Evegeni Malkin — to return:

Okay, last Russian story — Ilya Kovalchuk will be heading to the Olympics... as a General Manager:

Week one is in the books, so it’s time to overreact to what we’ve seen so far:

DownGoesBrown also makes his early evaluations with his first Weekend Rankings of the season:

Finally, here’s a deep dive into Seattle Kraken captain Mark Giordano and his path from Russia to ultimately the Emerald City:

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