Stars-Blues thoughts

This was a good end to a very good road trip. They got five of six points and improved to 4-0-3 on the road this season. They are 5-2-4 overall and tied for first in the division. It’s a pretty solid start to the season and they still haven’t won two games in a row yet. 

Still, if you look at the standings there are a lot of teams with about the same point totals, so it’s a little early to get giddy about anything. It’s tight and there’s a long way to go. But it’s a lot better start than last season and that poor start really put them in a hole they expended a lot of energy climbing out of that hole last season.

Saturday night there was a lot to like about the game. I thought they played a pretty good first period. They got outshot 10-8, but Marty Turco was excellent, they killed two St. Louis power plays and had some good chances that were turned away by Ty Conklin.

Marty Turco made a great pass to help set up the first goal by Neal and then the Blues seemed to come unglued after the Steve Ott hit on Carlo Colaiacovo, the Stars got a long power play and cashed in to make it a 2-0 game. The Blues, who had played the night before, were chasing a bit after that and the Stars were playing too well to be caught.

A few of other observations. I thought Loui Eriksson had a great game and not just because he scored a goal and had an assist. I thought he was really good on the penalty kill, which was 5-5 and is on a 22-25 run over the last seven games.

The power play was 1-7 and missed on some chances to blow the game open, but I think the goal it scored was huge and I don’t think those ones it missed on really hurt them in a momentum sense. I really felt they were in control of things after Eriksson scored on that power play and the Blues kept putting them on more power plays. They won the special teams battle.

Brenden Morrow had a pretty strong game too, even though he didn’t end up on the score sheet. He had that relentless edge to his game.

The Stars get a day off tomorrow and then they get back to work on Monday in Frisco. The winless Maple Leafs are in town Wednesday. They lost 3-1 in Vancouver Saturday and play in Anaheim on Monday, so we’ll have to wait and see if they are still winless when they roll into the AAC.

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