The Dallas Stars recovered from a 2-0 deficit to beat the Columbus Blue Jackets. While the final score is nice, and they don’t award style points in the standings, there were still disturbing trends in this one that Dallas needs to address — and quick — because better teams will make that comeback harder to accomplish.
Poor Start (Again)
Whoo boy, that was not a start that head coach Pete DeBoer would have liked to see from his team. The Stars continued a troubling trend to start the 2023-24 season by looking basically lifeless for much of the first half of the first period. As detailed earlier, the Stars aren’t exactly lighting the world on fire in first period scoring.
Back-to-back games in which they dig themselves a 2-0 hole is the kind of thing a veteran team like Dallas should find unacceptable. Columbus suckerpunched them to start the game with a goal by Boone Jenner just 69 seconds into the game, and then followed it up with a 2-on-1 breakaway that Kirill Marchenko finished off after the Stars were unable to corral the puck on a blocked shot. (Side note: the speed of Adam Fantilli is going to prove to be very troublesome to the NHL as the Blue Jackets improve in future seasons.)
Dallas finally sparked a little life after the second goal against when Mason Marchment scored just 49 seconds after Kirill Marchenko gave Columbus that two-goal lead to make the first period not wholly terrible.
The Matt Duchene Effect
It’s both surprising and not that when the Stars have their full contingent of forwards, they look better as a collective. Something about playing guys on lines where chemistry is developing allows DeBoer to spread out the offense a little bit better.
We’ll call it the Matt Duchene effect tonight. His line was the most dangerous offensively for the Stars, sparking the comeback late in the first and layering on two more in the game to put this one out of reach for Columbus, with all three guys on that line getting one. In a game in which the top line of Jason Robertson-Joe Pavelski-Roope Hintz was relatively quiet, the secondary scoring finally broke through the way most would have expected when penciling out lines in the summer.
The Power Play Needs a Cleanse
It is really embarrassing how bad the power play has looked to start the season considering the quality of players that feature on the top unit for the Stars. Whether it’s over-passing, looking for a cute play, or just not being able to get a zone entry, no one thing has looked to be the pinpoint issue for why they haven’t been converting. But whatever it is, the Stars need to wipe the slate clean and start over again because this….this isn’t working. At all.
The only thing keeping the special teams from being a complete flop to start the year is the sparkling penalty kill. Though they’re one of the least penalized teams in the league so far, it’s good to know that when they do go to the box, it’s not a guarantee that it’ll hurt their momentum.
Results May Vary
The Stars scored five unanswered goals for the 5-2 win, including a nice 2-on-1 that Radek Faksa started and Craig Smith cashed in on the rebound and an empty-netter to get Jason Robertson’s offense jumpstarted. They improve to 8-3-1 on the season and sit atop the Central Division (pending the results of the later Colorado Avalanche game Thursday night.)
It’s a really good record, and the crazy part is they’re finding ways to win even with all of the issues in their game. As American Thanksgiving approaches, it’s promising where the Stars are. After all, teams in playoff positions at that time in the season are overwhelmingly likely to make the playoffs than not. When they start to put it all together for a full 60 minute effort, Dallas could be a downright terror in the league.
The real question is how long we’ll have to wait to see that happen.