Dallas Stars seeking to join NHL’s elite, ready for Capitals
It was a statement win for the Dallas Stars. They skated into Chicago, less than a week after the Blackhawks throttled them in a 5-1 win back in the Lone Star State, and skated out with a 4-2 victory that saw them sprint out to a four-goal lead.
Impressive? Without question, and especially without the injured Jason Spezza. But for Lindy Ruff, it’s more important that the Stars show they belong among the elite rather than occasionally toppling them.
“Chicago has proven it year after year,” Ruff said. “We still have to prove we can get there and stay there and be able to battle a top team.”
Or battle the NHL’s top team, as they will when they face the Washington Capitals on Saturday night in Dallas. The Capitals have won five straight, and will have Evgeny Kuznetsov, their dynamic young center, despite a concussion scare this week.
The Stars have won two straight and are 6-3-1 after a severe stumble in January.
Oh, January was bad, as the Stars went 3-6-2.
Dallas has a plus-31 goal differential on the season. In January, at 5-on-5 over the course of 11 games, they were a minus-4.
Dallas has the fifth-best power-play in the NHL this season at 22.1. In January, they scored three goals on the power play. Their opponents scored four shorthanded goals in that span. That’s never a good thing, especially when the Stars scored nine goals and allowed only one shortie in December.
In five games in February, the Stars have five power-play goals, although they gave up two shorthanded in their first meeting with the Blackhawks. But still, they’re trending up.
Also trending up: Kari Lehtonen.
After three straight losses, he’s put together two wins over the Minnesota Wild (4-3) and Chicago Blackhawks (4-2) in which he faced 40 or more shots in each.
Josh Lile of WFAA liked what he saw from the goalie against the Blackhawks, where he was much more active in playing the puck than he traditionally is:
Touching the puck as much as he did no doubt kept his mind in the game, and it would be nice to see him handling the puck more often in the future as a way to keep the pressure off of the Stars defense corps. The offense deserves credit for that win, but little details like the puckhandling exploits of Lehtonen did make a huge difference. Whoever had the bright idea to get him more involved deserves a raise.
A lot of people are pulling for the Stars to maintain their success, because it’s a copycat league and their style of play is damn entertaining. But ultimately, they have to prove they’re something more than a regular-season steamroller whose engine blows in the postseason.
Wins over teams like Chicago and (perhaps) Washington don’t promise anything for the postseason, but at the very least they show this Dallas team can hang with, and defeat, the elite.
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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
