Written in the Stars
Welcome everyone. My name is Nathan Stacken and I will be talking Dallas Stars hockey with you. With the Dallas Stars in seventh place in the Western Conference and only a couple handful of games left, now it is time to get to the nit and gritty and see what this team is made of. Where is their mental toughness? Where is there physical toughness? Will they out-hustle their opponents to loose pucks? Will they gain momentum in not only securing a spot in the playoffs, but also make themselves a dangerous team along the way that teams won’t want to face? So far so good. They are currently in the midst of a three game road swing in Canada. That can be a tough stretch of games for anybody. More on how that is going in a second.
This year’s Dallas Stars is not like the Stars teams of years past. There is no Mike Modano, Brett Hull, Sergei Zubov or Ed Belfour. This team in my estimation, is a group of many under the radar players, but it appears general manager Joe Nieuwendyk, a former Dallas Star, has put together a team that will be able to compete and be a playoff regular for years to come. Take a look at some of the leaders this year and apart from Stars fans and the most diehard of hockey fans, how many people have heard of the following leaders:
- Goals: Michael Ryder (28)
- Points and Assists: Loui Eriksson (59 and 37 respectively)
Even a guy like goalie Kari Lehtonen, probably someone that if you listed the top ten goalies in the game would not be mentioned, has played fairly well this year, with a 2.29 GAA and .922 save percentage. He is 26-15-4 on the year. Looking at this team, I would say goalie is not one of the team’s strong suits, but they are doing an admirable job this year in getting the Stars into the playoff chase.
How far the Stars go depends largely upon whether or not Kari Lehtonen can continue his solid play in front of the net.
Now back to the road trip through Canada. Friday night was a big win for the Stars, beating the Edmonton Oilers 3-1 despite only mustering fifteen shots. Michael Ryder, Radek Dvorak and Tomas Vincour all scored for the Stars. The win makes the Stars unbeaten in regular time play in the last six games (6-0-1). Granted Edmonton is not that good, but they have a lot of young talent and they were playing at home. Any win this time of the year is good and this was a much needed win for the Stars to further position themselves for the final playoff spot.
On Sunday, the Stars were in Calgary to take on the Flames and once again the Stars showed up. Holding a 2-1 lead in the third period, Jerome Iginla scored the equalizer at the eight minute mark to tie the game 2-2. It would stay that way into the shootout where Eriksson and Jamie Benn each scored a goal while Lehtonen denied both Flames shooters. The Stars won 3-2 and now have 75 points and are tied for the division lead with the Phoenix Coyotes. With they way they’ve been playing recently, it will only be a matter of days before they take the division lead outright.
They finish their Canada road trip against the Vancouver Canucks tonight, Tuesday March 7th at 10 pm eastern. A sweep of the Canada teams on this road trip would be sweet and a huge confidence builder if their confidence can get any higher with their recent play.
The rest of this week: home games with San Jose at 7:30 pm central time on Thursday and Anaheim at 7:00 pm central time Saturday.
So continue to follow what the Stars are doing. In the following weeks leading up to the playoffs and presumably the Stars playoff run, we’ll have more posts with a few new tweaks added to them. No one knows the answer to whether or not the Stars can continue their recent hot play. It has to be written in the stars.