Stars Training Camp: Let the preseason games begin

Tuesday, September 15, 2009-9:40:pm
/Andrew's Dallas Stars Page                            

After three days of practices and scrimmages under coach Marc Crawford and another practice Wednesday morning, the Dallas Stars will hit the ice for their first preseason game Wednesday against the Tampa Bay Lightning at the American Airlines Center.

That game will be followed with another preseason tilt in Denver on Thursday.

"We're trying to be simple in our structure, keep building on our structure," said Crawford.

Before Wednesday's game the Stars will practice in Frisco and work on a few more areas of their game, including faceoffs. There will also be work on set breakouts and neutral zone forecheck.

"There will be a little bit of a difference in those than in years past," said Crawford. "That detail work. We're going to show it to them and we're going to practice it and hopefully they'll be able to implement it, but it's not going to happen right away."

Crawford said the Stars have been implementing the team's game plan over the first few days of camp in what he called a three-step plan leading up to the October 3 game against Nashville.

"We wanted to get through the first three or four days of camp with a basic understanding of the changes that are being made to our system. We're reinforcing it all the time in the practices and we'll reinforce it in the exhibition games," he said. "The next step after you understand it is to get comfortable with it. And the final step is when we play that first regular season game is that they are playing it instinctively. We are well along the way."

Turco expected to play Wednesday

• Coach Marc Crawford said he expected to start Marty Turco in goal Wednesday night against Tampa Bay. Tyler Beskorowany could play the second half of the game.

Tuesday scrimmage

The Stars changed up things for Tuesday's scrimmage. The first period was 25 minutes of four-on-four play and the second period was 30 minutes of special teams play. Team Black won over Team White 4-2.

Notes

• Luke Gazdic, Mike Ribeiro, Michael Neal, Toby Petersen, Jamie Benn and Tyler Shelast were the goal scorers.
   

• Ribeiro may have had the goal of the day, roofing a shot on Marty Turco off the rush from the right faceoff circle.
   

• Turco had some sharp glove saves, denying Michael Neal, Ray Sawada and Mike Modano.
   

• Matt Climie stopped Shelast on a penalty shot and made two nice saves in succession on Modano during his time in net.
   

• Richard Bachman had a solid outing, making a series of nice stops during a scramble in front of the net during the power play portion of the scrimmage and making a nice stop on Loui Eriksson as well.
   

• Among the players mentioned as standing out by Stars coach Marc Crawford were forwards Perttu Lindgren and Matt Beaudoin and defenseman Garrett Stafford.

Scoring

Power play units

These were the power play units used in the special teams portion of the scrimmage.

Practice lines

These were the line combinations and defensive pairings and the goalies for each team in the practice session that preceded Tuesday's scrimmage.