"We had a healthy team meeting about what they see, what we see, and how we've got to be better - mental mindsight, physical one-on-one battles, and all of those things," said Stars coach Jim Montgomery. "We asked for input from them so that everybody is on the same page."
Benn said the team has to react properly to the third period and understand that they have the ability to play better.
"We've had a little stretch of some good games and then we had one bad period," Benn said. "We know what we have to do to fix it, and we're going to try to do that tomorrow."
The Stars will play host to Minnesota on Tuesday, go to Colorado on Friday, then come back for home games against Montreal and Colorado before getting a four-day break. After a 1-7-1 start, they need to start making up ground in the standings.
"We all know where we are," Benn said. "We started bad, and that's unacceptable, so now we have to make up for it. Saturday was tough. We had two good periods and one bad period, and kind of shot ourselves in the foot, and we know we can't do that."
Although it was just a practice, Montgomery said he liked the response Monday. He said practices in satellite rinks with large crowds tend to go either way up or way down as far as energy goes, and he thought this one was positive.
"I give credit to our players, this was a really good practice," he said. "The energy was good, the execution was better."
Because if the team gains more attention, it has to find a way to be comfortable with expectations. The Stars dealt with a lot of emotional issues last season and found a way to make the playoffs. Montgomery said he realizes "team meetings" are coming a lot earlier this season, but he said that's part of trying to find consistent effort and execution.
"I'm not a confrontational person," he said, "but you confront things as soon as you're together again, whether that's good or bad."
