Stars News and Notes

Saturday, March 06, 2010-12:32:am
/Andrew's Dallas Stars Page                            

Coming off two ugly losses at home, the Dallas Stars are off on their first road trip following the Olympic break and it's a big one.

The trip features three tough opponents - defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh, league leading Washington, and Northeast Division leading Buffalo.

And the Stars need points to keep pace in the Western Conference playoff race. Eighth place Detroit won Friday night, pulling four points ahead of the Stars. Ninth place Calgary won as well, moving three points ahead of the Stars.

But the Stars weren't focused on what others were doing Friday. In practice they were focused on their own game, which has been nowhere close to where it needs to be coming out of the Olympic break in losses to Los Angeles and St. Louis by a combined 11-2 margin.

"We were focused on simply working," Stars coach Crawford said. "Sometimes you're never quite far off if you recognize that you've got to work harder. We recognize that's something we can improve on right now. I'm not saying there hasn't been good attention and good work, but we've been a lot off on our execution. When you get off on your execution, everything falls apart a little bit.

"So we tried to concentrate on two things: work and simplicity in our play. We're doing simple things. We're simply supporting the puck, we're simply skating hard, we're simply coming back. We're doing the basic things that when we're on, our team does a terrific job."

Lehtonen to start

Kari Lehtonen made his Dallas Stars debut in relief of Marty Turco on Thursday. He'll make his first start for the Stars in Pittsburgh on Saturday. 

“The good thing about last night was that he got to have about 35 minutes of quality start," said Stars coach Marc Crawford. "He got to see the subtleties of all the attention that the goalie has to have during a penalty kill. You can’t simulate that the way that game action does. The fatigue that sets in when you have the battle in the goal mouth for 30 or 40 seconds, that’s really hard, anaerobically for a goalie, so for him to get that intensity was certainly good, and I know he’s looking forward to his start.”

Lehtonen, who is coming off two offseason back surgeries, stopped 14 of 16 shots during his first NHL action since last April. Stars goaltending coach Mike Valley thinks Lehtonen can get up to speed quickly.

"Any time you get into an NHL game it's a different pace. I think the toughest thing for him is finding that game rhythm again," Valley said. "He's played quite a few NHL games and he's got that experience. I don't think it's going to take very long."

Crawford: Turco not being on bench addressed

After getting pulled in the second period of Thursday night's loss to St. Louis, Stars goalie Marty Turco did not stay on the bench with the team. Stars coach Marc Crawford said the issue was discussed Friday morning.

‘We addressed it this morning. Nobody likes to get pulled. I don’t think he was trying to do anything,” Crawford said. “It’s how you view things and how everybody views it, especially our young players or whether it’s just our team in general. As I said, we addressed it and moved forward from it. I don’t think for a minute he was trying to draw attention from the team. I think he was probably a little bit upset with his own performance and was trying to focus himself.”

Turco did remain at American Airlines Center during the rest of the game.

Practice lines

Stars coach Marc Crawford juggled his lines at Friday's practice. Here's a look at the combinations. One note, center Mike Modano had the day off.