DALLAS — At what point does a slump go from being just a slump to becoming an identity? There is no exact answer to the question but the Stars are pushing it.
Losing to the reeling Canucks, who hadn’t beaten a team that was in the top three of their division since the Hurricanes on Jan. 15, would be a lot more shocking, had the Stars not lost to the Blackhawks and Blue Jackets within the last 10 days. Those three teams make up half of the bottom six in the NHL and the Stars went 0-1-2 against them in this recent stretch.
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“I thought our first 15 minutes of the game was maybe as poorly as we played all year,” Stars head coach Pete DeBoer said. “You’re going to have games like that. I don’t know the answer, traveling back (from Vegas), emotional win in Vegas, I don’t know. Fortunate to get a point. Move forward and we’ve got to be a lot better next game.”
The results have been just as frustrating as the process. On Monday, the woeful Stars power play was staring at its medicine — the Canucks penalty kill. The Canucks rank dead last in the NHL — by a considerably wide margin — on the penalty kill at 66.7 percent. The Stars power play — which ranks second in the NHL through the first 38 games at 28.8 percent but has been 31st in the league since Jan. 1 at 10.9 percent — got five opportunities. The top unit had all of its members and the second unit was injected with new blood with Evgenii Dadonov added to the mix. In five power-play opportunities against that penalty-kill unit, the Stars scored once.
The scoring overall has been remarkably lackluster. After the first half of the season offered a mirage of years of scoring troubles fading into the abyss, 2023 has brought them back to the forefront. The Stars are 28th in the NHL in scoring since the calendar flipped to 2023. Against the Canucks, though they had four goals, only two came at even strength. In addition to the one power-play goal, there was a short-handed breakaway goal by Jamie Benn. Those are supposed to be cherry-on-top scores, not what’s driving the team offense.
We say seemingly game after game that the Stars outplayed the opposition — and they did once again against the Canucks. The analytics are frankly jaw-dropping. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Stars held a 5.02-2.07 expected goals advantage and according to MoneyPuck, it was a 5.15-2.07 advantage for Dallas. There’s no doubt that the Stars dominated, except they didn’t.
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What brought some extra sting to Monday’s loss isn’t just that the Stars played well — in terms of generating chances — it was that Vancouver looked actively disinterested in winning. They had careless penalties, sometimes one after another in a short duration. Their puck movement was sloppy for most of the game and they were without one of their top players in JT Miller.
When any team hands you a game on a platter the way the Canucks did, anything short of a win is unacceptable. When it’s a team as bad as the Canucks, the expectation should be a smooth ride. That’s why the overtime sequence on Monday night hardly even matters. Yes, it cost the Stars a valuable point and, in that regard, it’s important that the Canucks dragged the Stars to overtime at 4-4. The game had no business reaching that juncture. No matter what happened in the extra period, this was not going to be a positive performance for the Stars.
Throughout most of the Stars’ two-month slump, they’ve at least been able to turn to their defense. On Monday night, they abandoned that as well. Jani Hakanpää pointed to a lack of communication and bad positioning. DeBoer added in a lack of execution as to why the play in front of Jake Oettinger was so poor.
Losing to three bottom-feeders would paint the picture of a bad hockey team but nobody would ever dare accuse the Stars of being that simplistic. In the past three weeks, they’ve had the aforementioned losses but also have wins over the top team in the conference, the Golden Knights, and over their potential first-round opponent, the Minnesota Wild. They also played two of the toughest teams in the NHL, the Lightning and Bruins, down to the wire.
The standings are starting to become a factor as well. The Stars are still a pretty safe bet to make the postseason, thanks mostly to a Western Conference that has to send eight teams, no matter how worthy they actually are. But with their 3-0 win Monday night over the Golden Knights, the Avalanche took over first place in the division by points percentage. The defending champions have won six games in a row and still have two head-to-head matchups against the Stars.
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Dallas can point to the overtime struggles and say that it won’t matter in the postseason. They can point to the losses to bad teams and say those teams won’t be in the postseason while touting their competitiveness against teams that will be there. But the Stars are exhibiting plenty of issues that will carry over. Are those issues part of this extended slump or are they becoming the team identity? The answer is as murky as it’s been at any point this season.
Quick hitters
• To be clear, the five goals against Oettinger were not his fault. The defense in front of Oettinger failed him. Still, it’s worth pointing out that coming into the game, the team Oettinger had the worst career save percentage against was his .857 against the Canucks. His .762 outing on Monday won’t help that.
• DeBoer slotted newcomer Dadonov on the third line with Jamie Benn and Wyatt Johnston while sliding Ty Dellandrea up to the second line with Mason Marchment and Tyler Seguin. DeBoer explained his decision by pointing to Benn and Johnston being interchangeable between their winger and centerman responsibilities. Dadonov is a pure winger so he slots in there while Dellandrea, also a centerman-winger hybrid, provided the second line with that same flexibility between him and Seguin.
• Dadonov scored one of the Stars’ two goals at five-on-five, which came courtesy of another great play by Johnston.
“It seems like he knew exactly where I was going so it was a nice pass,” Dadonov said.
• The Stars began overtime with Benn, Seguin and Miro Heiskanen on the ice. They won possession and still the game ended 48 seconds into the frame with them on the wrong end of it. Benn is having a great season and he’s been one of the consistent bright spots even during this rough stretch. He was also the Stars’ best player on Monday. However, it’s worth wondering how much he’s built out for overtime at this point in his career. He has been taken advantage of on the ice by the other team in overtime repeatedly this season.
After the game, Benn was one of the players requested for postgame media. He came to the locker room, fielded one question asking what happened in overtime and responded with, “Simply, not enough by myself. That’s it.” He then walked away.
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Scoring distribution
Robertson — 1G (Hintz) — 1A (Pavelski)
1A (Marchment) — 1A (Seguin) — 1A (Dellandrea)
1G1A (Benn) — 1A (Johnston) — 1G (Dadonov)
Karlstrom — Faksa — Olofsson
Heiskanen — Miller
1A (Suter) — 1G (Lundkvist)
Lindell — Hakanpää
Oettinger (.762 save percentage)
Three plays
These three non-scoring plays stood out:
Marchment’s fumble
No player on the Stars is stuck in the mud like Marchment is. He extended his streak of games without a goal to 30. He last scored on Dec. 13 against the Devils. Since then, he has had zero goals and seven assists. He should have had a goal, or at least a shot on goal, early in the first period but managed neither.
Joe Pavelski hexed
Another player struggling to score is Pavelski. He’s getting a lot of the looks he typically gets when he’s scoring but they aren’t going in for him right now.
Jason Robertson’s ridiculous pass to Roope Hintz
Maybe the most impressive play of the evening from the Stars was this pass from Robertson to Hintz. The anticipation and accuracy from Robertson and the aggression and speed from Hintz were spectacular.
(Photo of Joe Pavelski making an unsuccessful shot on goal Monday: Jerome Miron / USA Today)
