Stars enter Game 2 of Western 1st Round familiar with handling early adversity

DALLAS -- The Dallas Stars aren't confused or wondering why they're trailing the Minnesota Wild in the Western Conference First Round entering Game 2 on Monday.

The score of Game 1 on Saturday was a perfect indication of how the game went.

"It certainly didn't look like a playoff game from our point of view," Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said after a 6-1 loss in the series opener here. "You can't get your game going if you're not going to win battles. You can take any metric, and if you lose skating battles and puck battles, you're always on the receiving end of everything negative."

"Not many positives to be honest," forward Radek Faksa said following an optional practice Sunday. "Nobody expected a game like that."

Maybe not like that, a blowout when the Stars were the second-best team on the ice in every area of the ice, but these are the Stars and losing Game 1 is kind of their thing, as much as they would love for it not to be. This isn't new.

Dallas has lost nine of 11 Game 1s since the first round against the Calgary Flames in 2022.

"I mean we're not playing to lose Game 1," forward Jason Robertson said. "I don't know why that's the way it is."

The Stars at least are pretty good at handling the adversity early in a series.

They're 6-2 in Game 2 after losing the opener since 2022 and have gone on to win the series five times, including against the Colorado Avalanche in the first round last year, when they lost Game 1 at home 5-1 and won Game 7 at home 4-2.

Game 2 of this series is at American Airlines Center on Monday (9:30 p.m. ET; FDSNWI, FDSNNO, Victory+, ESPN, TVAS2, SN360).

"In the playoffs it's different, it's your season on the line," Robertson said. "In the regular season you can get away with it more often than not, but I hope that our urgency after losing Game 1 is where it needs to be and I think it should be. I think the guys can respond well. We're a veteran group. We understand. It's going to be a tough challenge, but just because we've done it in the previous years, it's not like we're owed anything. It's not going to make it any easier."

The difference this time is the Stars left Game 1 with pretty much nothing to feel good about.

They lost seven of the previous eight Game 1s since 2022 by one goal, including five in overtime. On some those nights they left the arena wondering why they didn't have a better fate, not resigned to why it happened.

Even last year, they lost 5-1 to the Avalanche in Game 1 of the first round, but that was a 2-1 game midway through the third period until Colorado built on its lead with three goals in the final 7:04, including an empty-net goal.

That was tight and the Stars felt they were right there. In fact, following that game exactly one year ago Sunday, Dallas defenseman Thomas Harley said, "I thought we played maybe our best game in a month or two tonight."

Nobody with the Stars can say that now.

Now they're about losing puck battles and races to the Wild.

They're talking about needing more urgency, about playing a more connected game, about finding ways to stack good plays on top of a good plays like Minnesota did often in Game 1.

They're talking about a power play, albeit 1-for-4 in Game 1, that needs to be more dangerous, and a penalty kill (2-for-4) that must be more aware of the high-danger area in front of the net without loosening the pressure on Quinn Hughes up top, a tightrope that has to be walked.

Joel Eriksson Ek scored both of his power-play goals off spread plays that went high to low to him in the slot. Both started with Hughes up top.

"The only way you win at this time of the year is you need all your guys playing, you need your top guys to be your top guys, you need your goaltending, you need your specialty teams," Gulutzan said. "We didn't get a lot of that yesterday. There's not one guy in that room that thinks that was the best version of themselves. You need it."

That obviously includes goalie Jake Oettinger, who made 23 saves on 28 shots.

Gulutzan has had to answer three questions about him since the final buzzer. He was asked immediately following the game if he thought about pulling Oettinger in the second period, when the Wild scored three straight times in first 6:30. He did not because he didn't pin the blame on the goalie for any of them.

He was asked Sunday if his feelings about Oettinger's performance changed at all after re-watching the game. He again defended Oettinger, saying it was a team issue and not a goalie issue.

Then he was asked if it would take a lot more for him to put Dallas' No. 1 goalie on the bench and Casey DeSmith in the net.

"It would have to be something," Gulutzan said, stopping his short with that thought. "We look at game to game, so I'm not going to fish ahead to see what happens, but everything is on the table come playoff time it doesn't matter if it's personnel or what it is. You're just trying to win a game. We don't want to mix and match too much. We lost Game 1. We've got to bounce back. Like I keep saying, there weren't many guys at the top of their game yesterday. I fully expect them to be better tomorrow."