When a team plays as badly defensively as the Dallas Stars did in giving up 18 goals in a three game span, progress often is measured in baby steps. On Thursday night at the Prudential Center in Newark, the Stars made modest progress in some areas.
The team showed more moxie and resiliency to regain some equilibrium after being held without a shot for the first half of the opening period. There were more sticks in the passing lanes at times. The forward-to-D gap control was better than it had been in a recent games.
These are all small areas of improvement the team can build upon.
Mostly, however, they leaned on Kari Lehtonen to keep the game close in a 1-0 road loss. The Stars have now dropped four games in a row in January after reeling off a 5-0-2 run to end the 2013 calendar year.
The big Finn erased several turnovers, stopped a breakaway and made a few mind-boggling saves from point-blank range en route to stopping 33 of 34 New Jersey Devils shots. The only one to get past him was a virtually unstoppable chance from ex-Star Michael Ryder from the slot at 8:17 of the second period.
Unfortunately for Dallas, they could not solve New Jersey Devils goaltender Corey Schneider even once on 26 shots. The Stars were unable to capitalize on a four-minute power play opportunity late in the second period, and Schneider made a handful of excellent saves of his own on sporadic turnovers and breakdowns in front of him.
Much of the game, at least in the first and second periods, was spent deep in Dallas territory. The Stars' undersized defense was often unable to cope with the New Jersey cycling game, especially the top line trio of Jaromir Jagr, Dainius Zubrus and Travis Zajac. Breakouts were difficult and skating room was hard to come by.
The Dallas offense in periods one and two came in brief flurries of chances. Head coach Lindy Ruff made numerous line changes heading into the game and then did some other line juggling within the game -- such as returning Valeri Nichushkin to the Tyler Seguin line after starting the game on Cody Eakin's unit -- but the club never generated a true sustained push over multiple shifts at a time.
After the game, Ruff likened playing the Devils to "crawling under a barbed wire fence in a wool sweater"; an apt analogy for the layers of snags that make it difficult to either carry the puck or dump it in and retrieve it on the forecheck.
The Stars' coach said that when a team gets a goaltending performance of the quality that Lehtonen provided and emerges with no points -- or goals -- at the end, it's a "wasted game."
Meanwhile, the players in the Dallas locker room were under no illusions that the game was truly as close as the scoreboard and reasonably even final 34-26 shot totals would suggest.
"We want to win, but we aren't hating enough to lose right now," said Seguin.
Benn added that he did not think the Stars deserved to win, despite being one shot away from tying it throughout the third period.
On the lone goal of the game for either side, New Jersey won a series of battles on an extended shift in the Stars' end. Defenseman Eric Gelinas pinched in to keep the puck deep in Dallas territory. Dallas forward Ryane Clowe picked it up in the corner and sent it behind the net to Zajac, who found Ryder wide open in the right slot inside the hash marks.
Ryder proceeded to hammer a perfectly placed one-timer past his former teammate. After the game, Lehtonen said he may have had a better chance at the save had he recognized sooner where Ryder was and who was shooting.
The Stars have no time to lament their loss. They are right back in action tomorrow, wrapping up their three-game trip through the greater New York area with a 6 p.m. CST meeting with the New York Rangers and Madison Square Garden.
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