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. 

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