Stars-Panthers thoughts
/Andrew's Dallas Stars Page
It was entertaining. It was also a little disturbing. After the sluggish start to the Toronto game, I expected a better outing tonight. It wasn’t there. Sure, they came back from 3-0 and 4-2 deficits and it’s a positive that they can do that and they deserve credit to for doing it. But starting slow, falling behind and having to play catch up on a regular basis will catch up with you eventually.
That five minute stretch of the first period where Steve Reinprecht scored the three goals off rebounds was brutal. The defense around the net was not very good and that was not just the defensemen but everybody involved. It was a team meltdown. And there were some other breakdowns the rest of the way.
This was a second rough outing for Alex Auld. You can’t pin it all on him. The play in front of him was pretty shoddy at times. I do give Auld credit for coming up with some big stops late in the game when it could have still be settled in regulation. He seemed to get better as it moved along. With Marty Turco out with flu-like symptoms Auld will get another start in Nashville, so we’ll get a chance to see how he bounces back from this one.
The shootout? Go figure. You roll out James Neal, Mike Ribeiro and Brad Richards you’d expect them to get something, but they got nothing. It didn’t help that Neal’s stick broke. Maybe it’s time for Ribeiro to do something creative. His attempts this season have been pretty straight forward and not very successful.
I thought Tom Wandell was excellent. Probably the Stars’ best player. He started playing head-to-head against Reinprecht later in the game and did a nice job. He also got double shifted. His primary line with Brian Sutherby and Fabian Brunnstrom was the team’s best line and produced two goals. Wandell’s become a very effective player and can do a lot of different things. I thought this was one of Brunnstrom’s better games. Maybe his best.
They got three of four points in these two home games this week, but neither was pretty and showed this team is still far from being a model of consistency. It’s still pretty early in the season though. It’s only game 13.
Saturday’s game will be a good test. The Stars have been very good on the road and Nashville’s been playing well lately, despite their struggles to score goals.. Steve Ott returns from his suspension. But no Mike Modano or Jere Lehtinen. They’re expected to return next week.
The one thing I do like is that these last two games are ones we found ways to lose the last couple seasons when we started off slowly. If we had grabbed an extra point here or there, it would have made a tremendous difference.
And we’ve been doing a lot of this already with key players injured or on suspension. While I agree we should probably be whooping up on teams like the Leafs and Panthers, I’m still anything but discourage at this point.