Andrew's Dallas Stars Blog

Stars-Islanders thoughts

Well, let’s roll out one of those cliche lines: What a difference a day makes. It fits in this case. The Stars looked like a much different team tonight. They were better across the board. There’s always talk about top players and tonight the Stars’ top players were excellent, starting with Mike Ribeiro and Brenden Morrow. Marty Turco came up with some timely saves. There was a lot better commitment to team defense. They won the special teams battle.

The Stars made the big plays. That Loui Eriksson power play goal to give the lead early was big. For once they weren’t gong to have to play from behind.  Another big play was that save Turco made on Richard Park moments before Ribeiro set up Morrow off the rush to make it a 2-0 game. Turco doesn’t make that stop and it’s a different game at that point. Equally big was that penalty kill sequence early in the second period. Turco doesn’t get a piece of that Doug Weight shot early in the five-on-three and maybe it’s a different game too. The Islanders have a goal, more PP time and some momentum. The Stars did a lot of the things teams need to do to win games, things they haven’t been doing to start the season.

Outside of the top line, I liked the play of Philippe Boucher tonight. I think he’s really been playing well lately. He missed the first part of camp because of the foot issue, but he is finally getting up to speed. Krys Barch had a very good game and got a little extra ice time. Some of the kids - Neal, Crombeen and Brunnstrom - saw their time cut in this game. All those guys are likely to hit some walls at times during the season. Niskanen didn’t see a lot of time either. He played just 11:05 in the game. As I mentioned after the New Jersey game the Stars only have 20 guys right now, so this is how you handle things when players aren’t getting it done. You end up shortening the bench, and just playing the guys who are getting it done. 

I am not going to look at this game as proof that things are fixed. The Islanders are kind of a mess with a new coach and a new system and it showed at times. But I thought there were some good signs for the Stars, especially the play of Ribeiro. I think he started to show signs of coming around before tonight, so maybe he is ready to get some consistency in his game.

There were some good signs on this road trip, but there were some negatives too. Four of six points is pretty good though and there are positives to build on as they come for a couple games before another tough road trip.  We’ll see how it goes Saturday against the Caps. 

James Neal article

Just came across this article on James Neal in hometown newspaper:

Neal rubbing shoulders with a true Star

Stars-Devils thoughts

In three words: A step back. If I were to expand on that I would say a big step back. New Jersey is a good team with a great goalie and you knew it was going to be a tough game. I wasn’t counting on a sure two points, but I expected a tough, hard fought game. Instead, they got run out of the building. It was disappointing.

A lot of the problems they seemed to clean up the other night against the Rangers were back Wednesday night against the Devils. I am not going to run through the same list of issues. If you’ve been watching you know what they are. They know what they are. As Dave Tippett likes to point out: You aren’t going to win many games when you are giving up five goals a night. You aren’t going to win many games if your special teams don’t come up big. You can’t win when you are consistently trying to play catch up.

The roster is what it is. They are up against the cap and basically they have 20 guys who can dress right now. I can’t think of anybody they can call up who would help the situation right now. They need the players they have here - especially their best players - to get in gear.

Does Tippett give Marty Turco a night or two off? That would be an easy call if Mike Smith were still around, but he isn’t. I’m not sure I am comfortable doing that under the current backup situation. Maybe a start against the Islanders, but not an extended run. Of course the success of this trip hinges on that game against the Islanders. Come up short in that game and it’s a 1-2-0 or 1-1-1 trip maybe and a 2-5-1 or 2-4-2 start to the season. It’s a tough call for Tippett. 

It’s still early in the season, but as I believe I said before - extended lousy starts have to start somewhere. The Stars have laid the groundwork for one here in the first couple weeks and need to get things under control before things spiral out of control. It’s still way too early to panic, but until they show some consistency in their game there has to be concern. 

Searching for Sean Avery: Clarke calls him an idiot

Here’s another Sean Avery tidbit that has shown up in my mailbox via Google News. This one has to do with Bob Clarke ripping into Avery on TSN’s Off The Record. Here’s a quote from Clarke:

“He’s (Avery) making a fool of the game,” Clarke told TSN. “He crosses the line all the time. He’s an idiot. And if the referees see him giving it to Brodeur like he did in the playoffs - yapping, yapping, yapping - it’s pre-meditated. Give him a penalty. You’ll end it right away. If not, I think one of the Devils should come to Brodeur’s aid. Drill him, punch him, make him fight. If he wants to be a yapper, make him fight.”

You can read a TSN article on Clarke’s comments here. 

Steve Ott: Boat racing enthusiast

The Hockey Show did a feature on Steve Ott and his passion for boat racing. Here it is:

A scheduling note

A scheduling note for down the road. The NHL has changed the start time of the Stars-Sharks game on December 29 to 8 pm Central Time. It was originally set for 7:30 pm.

Avery interview from last night

Here’s an interview Sean Avery did last night after the game. It’s with Stan Fishcler of MSG. Some pretty good stuff at points.

Searching for Sean Avery: Verbal confrontation

There’s obviously a plethora of stuff coming out of New York on Sean Avery these days, but this little tidbit that showed up my mailbox compliments of Google News caught my attention. You have to go to the bottom of the main topic in the Newsday story, which is about the Rangers putting Patrick Rissmiller on waivers, to find this:

Notes & quotes: Sean Avery and MSG Network’s John Giannone engaged in a heated, profanity-laced confrontation between the first and second periods Monday night near the officials’ room, two eyewitnesses confirmed yesterday. With arena personnel nearby, Avery emerged from the Stars locker room with about four minutes remaining in the break and unleashed a barrage of obscenities at Giannone. When Avery reportedly made a remark about Giannone’s wife, the broadcaster fired back. When the officials emerged from the room, Avery and the Stars’ Krystofer Barch went toward the ice and the dispute cooled down. Giannone declined to comment yesterday and referred questions to MSG. “There was a verbal exchange between the two last night,” an MSG spokesman said. “It’s over and we won’t have any further comment.” The league is not expected to discipline Avery, who wasn’t available for comment Tuesday.

There’s more about it on another New York media blog, which you can read here. 

Brodeur on Avery

The next stop on the Sean Avery return to the New York area is New Jersey, where he’ll face the Devils and goalie Marty Brodeur tomorrow night. There’s no love lost between those two guys. Brodeur was asked about Avery’s return today and here’s what he had to say, according to the Fire and Ice blog at NorthJersey.com:

“It’s a hockey game we need to win,” Brodeur said. “We haven’t been at home for a while and haven’t played in a while, so all of this thing around him coming back is not something that’s on our priority list, that’s for sure. It’s about winning the hockey games. We have to deal with him for just a couple of games this year. That’s an improvement from last year when we had to deal with him for 13 games.”

According to Fire and Ice, Avery wasn’t talking after the Stars’ practice today. 

Rookie scoring

Somebody pointed this out on the message board and I found it interesting. This is the list of top rookie scorers from NHL.com following last night's games. You may notice the Stars have three players in the top ten , including the top goal scorer (Brunnstrom), a guy tied for second in goal scoring (Neal) and another tied for second in assists (Crombeen).

RK	Player	Team	Pos	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM
1	Kris Versteeg	CHI	R	6	1	5	6	3	0
2	Fabian Brunnstrom	DAL	L	4	4	1	5	-1	0
3	Derick Brassard	CBJ	C	5	2	2	4	0	2
4	James Neal	DAL	L	6	2	2	4	1	8
5	Kyle Turris	PHX	C	5	1	3	4	-3	0
6	Jakub Voracek	CBJ	R	5	2	1	3	0	6
7	Oscar Moller	LAK	C	5	1	2	3	1	0
8	Ryan Jones	NSH	R	4	1	2	3	2	0
9	Patrik Berglund	STL	C	4	1	2	3	3	0
10	Brandon Crombeen	DAL	R	6	0	3	3	2	14

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