Dallas Stars Fall to Avalanche, 4-1

The Dallas Stars lost to the Colorado Avalanche tonight by a score of 4-1, making their record to (26-22-8). The Stars are still sitting out of the two wildcard positions and the doesn’t help their hopes of playing come April.

Recap

The first period started with a Dallas power play and a Curtis McKenzie fight against Colorado’s Cody McLeod. After that the game calmed down a bit with each team being called for icing and offside a number of times. Both teams exchanged chances, but failed to score on them. That is until Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon scored on a deflection shot that also found its way through a screen to give them a 1-0 lead at 11:28 of the period. Despite surrendering the first goal of the game, Jhonas Enroth made a few key saves including a stop on a prime opportunity against Jarome Iginla. Colorado took their 1-0 lead as well as a 10-6 shots advantage into the first intermission.

The second period began with a handful of chances for the Stars, the best being a bid in close by Vernon Fiddler, but Semyon Varlamov always had the answer. At 5:28 of the period Colorado’s Alex Tanguay converted on a rebound that bounced right to him as he skated by the back door to put Dallas down by two. The Stars came back with a few more opportunities, but Colorado put on immense offensive pressure for a few minutes causing Lindy Ruff to use his only timeout. With about four minutes remaining it looked as if Jason Spezza scored, but the puck was determined to be batted into the net “without control” making it not count. The Avalanche took their 2-0 lead and 23-15 advantage in shots into the intermission.

Only 3:20 into the third period the Avalanche took a 3-0 lead, but somehow their defensemen ran into one another and were on the ice for some time seemingly injured. Then with 13:38 remaining in the period Jason Demers and Cody McLeod exchanged punches after McLeod reopened Demers’ wound to his mouth. McLeod was given a five-minute major and a game misconduct, while Demers got a two-minute roughing minor and a game misconduct for the infraction. The Stars got a three-minute power play out of that situation, only to be called for too many men negating the man advantage. While playing four-on-four Ruff pulled Enroth in favor of the extra attacker with ten minutes remaining and Spezza scored to make it 3-1 Colorado. Dallas created a number of opportunities for themselves after Spezza’s goal, but couldn’t score. The Avalanche added a fourth goal with less than a minute remaining to beat the Stars by a score of 4-1.

Thoughts and Observations

Line Change Confusion

The injuries to Tyler Seguin, Ales Hemsky, and Patrick Eaves last night in addition to Antoine Roussel’s suspension caused the Stars’ lines to be drastically different than usual. In fact, only Cody Eakin/Ryan Garbutt and Jason Spezza/Erik Cole played on the same lines both tonight and last night, every other Stars forward was playing with different players on their line. This lack of familiarity with line mates made it that much more difficult for the Stars to get their offense going, which negatively impacted the rest of their play. Although the team wasn’t awful offensively considering their disadvantage, they weren’t able to convert on the chances they created for themselves and it cost them the win.

Lack of Luck

For whatever reason Dallas cannot catch a break lately. They lost three forwards to injury on Friday night alone and then had to call-up a few players from the Texas Stars to fill their places. On top of that the team had to travel and play the second game of a back-to-back following all of these injuries and personnel changes. All of this made for a less than desirable first game as a Dallas Star for Enroth and made the loss that much more difficult to take. Despite their lack of luck, however, Dallas has to overcome the adversity and continue to fight for their hopeful return to the post-season.

Wildcard Race

Speaking of the playoffs, the Stars are still in control of their own fate. That doesn’t mean it will be easy though. Tonight the Winnipeg Jets won in a shootout against the Red Wings to give them another two points, Minnesota added a win in regulation to give them 65 on the year, and Vancouver and Calgary are opponents tonight meaning one of the two is guaranteed two points as well. Essentially, the Stars are not going to get any help from the teams they are competing for the final playoff positions with and they have to take every advantage to earn all the points they can in their remaining games.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to check back for the preview and post game analysis on Tuesday night as the Stars take on the St. Louis Blues!