Dallas Stars Power Play Shows Just How Much John Klingberg is Missed
By Summer LeBel
The Dallas Stars went 0-for-4 on the power play last night and made it very clear how important John Klingberg is to their success with the man advantage.
The power play isn’t the only place the Dallas Stars are missing John Klingberg, but watching the power play struggle last night was the most obvious one.
With Klingberg gone, Miro Heiskanen is taking over for him on the first unit. Heiskanen is a fantastic player, but he’s still young and he looked a little out of his depth on the power play.
Heiskanen in fast and talented, and he may eventually be able to run the power play like Klingberg, but he just needs a little more time.
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When fans talk about how skilled he looks, they point out how young he is, but that sometimes gets forgotten when it comes to criticism. He’s only 19 and he’s being asked to run a power play unit with some of the best players in the league.
He’s far from the only problem the Stars had last night. There were bad decisions made by a lot of players, especially on the second unit. A few mistakes are expected, but the Stars were all over the place last night.
The Blue Jackets defense was keeping them from getting clean zone entries, but even when they were in the zone, they couldn’t get set up to actually cycle the puck. Passes were all over the place, and the puck came out of the offensive zone far too many times, because of both missed passes and good pressure from the Blue Jackets.
There were several times Stars fans were mad about missed calls during the game. While the debate about whether they were actually missed or not is a whole separate topic, the reality remains that this Stars power play didn’t look like they’d do much damage, even with another chance or two.
That being said, this was a one-goal game, and if the first power play unit can actually get set up, they have a lot of firepower. Another power play may have been the difference that took the game to overtime, but it’s not like they didn’t have their chances.
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Looking ahead to Friday, the Stars need to step up their work on the power play and hope that their terrible showing on Tuesday was just a fluke.